All articles tagged with #fossilized teeth
Originally Published 6 months ago — by IFLScience
Scientists have extracted the oldest animal proteins from 18 to 24 million-year-old fossils, using dental enamel to preserve these molecules in harsh environments, significantly extending the known age range for recoverable ancient proteins and opening new avenues for studying deep evolutionary history.
Originally Published 2 years ago — by SAPIENS
A mathematical model using the relative lengths of molar teeth has been developed by paleoanthropologists to track evolutionary changes in prenatal growth rates in the fossil record. The model suggests that pregnancy and prenatal growth became more humanlike than chimplike almost 1 million years ago. The rate of prenatal growth directly relates to how big an adult brain grows, and understanding more about when prenatal growth and pregnancy became humanlike reveals information about when and how our brains did too. Teeth can even indirectly hint at the emergence of human consciousness via evolving brain size.