Primate Mastication
Experimental and comparative research on food processing in primates has
prompted a number of contentious issues in biological anthropology. What
is the relationship of diet to jaw form? What role does dental development
play in determining the adult morphology of primate jaws? Why do humans
alone have chins? Do different primate lineages solve functional problems
in equivalent fashion? What were early hominids doing with their enormous
jaws?
Methods in which morphology is compared between species
of different size, feeding behavior, habitat or evolutionary history not
only serve to address these issues, but such studies invariably inspire
more careful scrutiny of the complex relationship of adaptation and heritage
to variation in the primate facial skeleton. Despite a prolific literature
in the area of primate mastication, many persistent questions remain unanswered.
My work in this area has helped to redefine a number of provocative yet
testable hypotheses regarding the evolution of the mandible in primates.
| Human jaws are remarkably unlike the mandibles of other primates, even
though we have evidence that we chew our food in much the same way as our
primate relatives. As our jaws have become shortened and widened through
evolutionary history, the impact of various muscle, biting and joint forces
have changed as well. Perhaps the reason we have a chin is that coronal
bending in the anterior mandible remains an important loading regime while
other sources of stress have diminished in importance. |
 |
Representative Publications
Daegling, D.J. (2002) Bone geometry in cercopithecoid mandibles.
Archs. Oral Biol. 47: 315-325.
Daegling, D.J. and McGraw, W.S. (2001) Feeding, diet,
and jaw form in West African colobines. Int. J. Primatol. 22:
1033-1055.
Daegling, D.J. (2001) Biomechanical scaling of the hominoid
mandibular symphysis. J. Morphology 250: 12-23.
Daegling, D.J. (1993) Functional morphology of the
human chin. Evolutionary Anthropology 1: 170-177.
Daegling, D.J. (1992) Mandibular Morphology and Diet in
the Genus Cebus. Int. J. Primatol. 13: 545-570.
Daegling, D.J. and Grine, F.E. (1991) Compact bone distribution
and biomechanics of early hominid mandibles. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol.
86:
321-339.
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