The Leakey Foundation

12.28.18

What Teeth Can Tell Us About Ancient Humans and Neanderthals

Teeth are a really useful indicator of past environments. This is possible because teeth have biological rhythms and key events get locked inside them. These faithful internal clocks run night and day, year after year, and include daily growth lines and a marked line formed at birth.

10.15.18

Neanderthal-like Features in 450,000-Year-Old Fossil Teeth from Italy

Journal Article

Fossil teeth from Italy, among the oldest human remains on the Italian Peninsula, show that Neanderthal dental features had evolved by around 450,000 years ago.

09.07.18

Mother’s Milk Holds Key to Unlocking an Evolutionary Mystery From the Last Ice Age

As biologists explore the variation across the genomes of living people, they’ve found evidence of evolution at work. Particular variants of genes increase or decrease in populations through time. Sometimes this happens by chance. Other times these changes in frequency result from the gene’s helping or hindering individuals’ survival.

08.07.17

From the Field: Kathryn McGrath

From the Field

Kathryn McGrath was awarded a Leakey Foundation Research Grant in our spring 2016 cycle for her project entitled “Understanding stress-related enamel defects in wild mountain gorillas.” Here she updates us on her progress.

07.29.17

It’s not that your teeth are too big: your jaw is too small

Guest Post

We hold in our mouths the legacy of our evolution. We rarely consider just how amazing our teeth are.

Archives for teeth

What Teeth Can Tell Us About Ancient Humans and Neanderthals

Neanderthal-like Features in 450,000-Year-Old Fossil Teeth from Italy

Mother’s Milk Holds Key to Unlocking an Evolutionary Mystery From the Last Ice Age

From the Field: Kathryn McGrath

It’s not that your teeth are too big: your jaw is too small