Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Profile of Professor Tobias
- List of participants
- Foreword
- Address
- Keynote address
- Searching for common ground in palaeoanthropology, archaeology and genetics
- The history of a special relationship: prehistoric terminology and lithic technology between the French and South African research traditions
- Essential attributes of any technologically competent animal
- Significant tools and signifying monkeys: the question of body techniques and elementary actions on matter among apes and early hominids
- Tools and brains: which came first?
- Environmental changes and hominid evolution: what the vegetation tells us
- Implications of the presence of African ape-like teeth in the Miocene of Kenya
- Dawn of hominids: understanding the ape-hominid dichotomy
- The impact of new excavations from the Cradle of Humankind on our understanding of the evolution of hominins and their cultures
- Stone Age signatures in northernmost South Africa: early archaeology in the Mapungubwe National Park and vicinity
- Vertebral column, bipedalism and freedom of the hands
- Characterising early Homo: cladistic, morphological and metrical analyses of the original Plio-Pleistocene specimens
- Early Homo, ‘robust’ australopithecines and stone tools at Kromdraai, South Africa
- The origin of bone tool technology and the identification of early hominid cultural traditions
- Contribution of genetics to the study of human origins 276
- An overview of the patterns of behavioural change in Africa and Eurasia during the Middle and Late Pleistocene
- From the tropics to the colder climates: contrasting faunal exploitation adaptations of modern humans and Neanderthals
- New neighbours: interaction and image-making during the West European Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition
- Late Mousterian lithic technology: its implications for the pace of the emergence of behavioural modernity and the relationship between behavioural modernity and biological modernity
- Exploring and quantifying technological differences between the MSA I, MSA II and Howieson's Poort at Klasies River
- Stratigraphic integrity of the Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave
- Testing and demonstrating the stratigraphic integrity of artefacts from MSA deposits at Blombos Cave, South Africa
- From tool to symbol: the behavioural context of intentionally marked ostrich eggshell from Diepkloof, Western Cape
- Chronology of the Howieson's Poort and Still Bay techno-complexes: assessment and new data from luminescence
- Subsistence strategies in the Middle Stone Age at Sibudu Cave: the microscopic evidence from stone tool residues
- Speaking with beads: the evolutionary significance of personal ornaments
- Personal names index
- Subject index
Implications of the presence of African ape-like teeth in the Miocene of Kenya
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 June 2019
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Profile of Professor Tobias
- List of participants
- Foreword
- Address
- Keynote address
- Searching for common ground in palaeoanthropology, archaeology and genetics
- The history of a special relationship: prehistoric terminology and lithic technology between the French and South African research traditions
- Essential attributes of any technologically competent animal
- Significant tools and signifying monkeys: the question of body techniques and elementary actions on matter among apes and early hominids
- Tools and brains: which came first?
- Environmental changes and hominid evolution: what the vegetation tells us
- Implications of the presence of African ape-like teeth in the Miocene of Kenya
- Dawn of hominids: understanding the ape-hominid dichotomy
- The impact of new excavations from the Cradle of Humankind on our understanding of the evolution of hominins and their cultures
- Stone Age signatures in northernmost South Africa: early archaeology in the Mapungubwe National Park and vicinity
- Vertebral column, bipedalism and freedom of the hands
- Characterising early Homo: cladistic, morphological and metrical analyses of the original Plio-Pleistocene specimens
- Early Homo, ‘robust’ australopithecines and stone tools at Kromdraai, South Africa
- The origin of bone tool technology and the identification of early hominid cultural traditions
- Contribution of genetics to the study of human origins 276
- An overview of the patterns of behavioural change in Africa and Eurasia during the Middle and Late Pleistocene
- From the tropics to the colder climates: contrasting faunal exploitation adaptations of modern humans and Neanderthals
- New neighbours: interaction and image-making during the West European Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition
- Late Mousterian lithic technology: its implications for the pace of the emergence of behavioural modernity and the relationship between behavioural modernity and biological modernity
- Exploring and quantifying technological differences between the MSA I, MSA II and Howieson's Poort at Klasies River
- Stratigraphic integrity of the Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave
- Testing and demonstrating the stratigraphic integrity of artefacts from MSA deposits at Blombos Cave, South Africa
- From tool to symbol: the behavioural context of intentionally marked ostrich eggshell from Diepkloof, Western Cape
- Chronology of the Howieson's Poort and Still Bay techno-complexes: assessment and new data from luminescence
- Subsistence strategies in the Middle Stone Age at Sibudu Cave: the microscopic evidence from stone tool residues
- Speaking with beads: the evolutionary significance of personal ornaments
- Personal names index
- Subject index
Summary
Abstract
This paper deals with some of the implications of the discovery of four ape-like teeth from the Middle Miocene (12,5 Ma) and Late Miocene (6–5,9 Ma) of Kenya. An unworn, isolated lower molar from Member B of the Ngorora Formation (12,5 Ma), Tugen Hills, Kenya, differs markedly from lower molars of Middle and Early Miocene large hominoids but is closer in morphology to chimpanzee molars (peripheralised cusps, buccolingually compressed lingual cusps, thin enamel, large and deep occlusal basin, reduced buccal cingulum). If the tooth is part of the chimpanzee clade then it is important for estimating the timing of the dichotomy between chimpanzees and hominids and suggests that this event would have occurred several million years earlier than is currently estimated by most researchers.
An incomplete, unworn isolated upper molar, an upper central incisor and a lower molar from the Lukeino Formation (6–5,9 Ma), Tugen Hills, Kenya, are morphologically closer to those of Gorilla gorilla than to any other fossil or extant hominoid with which they were compared. The upper molar is a large tooth (mesio-distal length 14 mm) with peripheralised cusps, bucco-lingually wide distal fovea, fairly voluminous trigon basin and high dentine penetrance, all features which suggest affinities with gorillas. Its enamel thickness (1,6–1,7 mm on the hypocone) is similar to that of gorilla molars. It differs markedly from molars of the early hominid, Orrorin tugenensis, which occurs at the same site, which are smaller, have more centralised cusps, smaller trigon basin, reduced distal fovea and low dentine penetrance. The Kapsomin molar differs from teeth of australopithecines for much the same reasons, even if its dimensions overlap with those of Australopithecus antiquus and Praeanthropus africanus. It is highly divergent from chimpanzee teeth, not only in its dimensions, but also in its morphology. An upper central incisor from Kapsomin is large and wedge-shaped in lateral view without the lingual fossa that characterises teeth of hominids and chimpanzees. It is close in size and morphology to those of gorillas.
If the species from which the Kapsomin and Cheboit teeth came is part of the gorilla clade, then there are important implications for the timing of events in gorilline evolution, and they make it less likely that European genera such as Ouranopithecus are ancestral to African apes or hominids.
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- Information
- From Tools to SymbolsFrom Early Hominids to Modern Humans, pp. 121 - 133Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2005