Her name is "Lucy", our three-million-year-old ancestor.

Abstract

Dental anthropology is a key discipline in studies to determine the evolutionary history of our hominid ancestors, to identify the origin and dispersal of modern humans, and to reconstruct the source of observed dental variation. A survey of hominid and modern human evolutionary history, emphasizing results from powerful multivariate dental morphometric methodologies, suggests a single African origin of modern humans > 150,000 years before present from a Homo heidelbergensis ancestor. A continuum among modern humanity is described, with, first, sub-Saharan Africans, then southeast Asian Negrito, and Australian aborigines at its extant root. Other interpretations of the available data are possible. Examinations of the progress of the evolution of teeth through time give significant insight into dental morphogenetics and variation, and the biology of dental evolution. The mechanisms of evolution which fashion a phenotype and the methods of molecular and dental phylogenetics are reviewed and evaluated. This is an exciting time for dental anthropology, with fascinating and challenging questions to address, but anthropologists, not dentists, dominate the field. The perspective of a dentist can meaningfully add to the dynamics of dental anthropology.