The Early Pleistocene fossils of the Koobi Fora Formation, northern Kenya, record two well-documented hominin genera, Homo and Paranthropus, preser...

Dental topography is a powerful tool for investigating the relationship between diet and tooth shape in mammals. Here, we test whether dental topographic metrics (DTMs) can accurately predict diet in marsupials based on 81 lower molars from 43 extant species in 12 families (six of the seven extant orders), and compare them to DTMs of primates with similar diets. DTMs tested included Dirichlet normal energy (DNE) and variants (ariaDNE, convex DNE, and ariaDNE CV), orientation patch count rotated (OPCR), and Relief Index (RFI). We also investigate the use of the ratio of trigonid to talonid height (TriTaHI) as an additional DTM. Notably, RFI and ariaDNE were less sensitive to sample composition and scanning modality than OPCR and ariaDNE CV were. For marsupials, highest dietary classification accuracy of the leave-one-out quadratic discriminant analysis was achieved by combining ariaDNE, RFI, molar size, and TriTaHI of lower second and third molars, resulting in 69.2% accuracy. In contrast, the primate sample of lower second molars reached highest classification accuracy (80.4%) when using only ariaDNE, RFI, and molar size. When using a clade-based cross-validated approach (i.e., using the primate sample to predict marsupial diets and vice versa), only ariaDNE, RFI, and molar size were needed to obtain the maximum classification accuracy (69.7% when classifying primates using the marsupial training set; and 61.8% vice versa). The comparative dataset of this study should prove useful for studies aiming to reconstruct the diets of fossil mammals that lack phylogenetically close extant analogues.

The extinct pig Cainochoerus inhabited eastern Africa during the late Miocene, around 6 million years ago and was remarkably small compared to modern African pigs. Now, a team of paleontologists reports the discovery of rare fossil jaws and teeth from the Lemudong’o site in the southern Kenyan Rift,...

Meet the 30 scientists who received Fall 2025 research grants from The Leakey Foundation to study human origins, evolution, behavior, and survival.

With its attribution to Paranthropus, a 2.6-million-year-old partial mandible expands the range of the genus into the Afar region of Ethiopia and adds to our understanding of hominin evolution in east...

Homo habilis, 2 million years old, was known mainly from teeth and jaw bones

Scientists have revealed the most complete skeleton yet of our 2 million-year-old ancestor Homo habilis.

Cainochoerus is an extinct suid (Mammalia, Artiodactyla) taxon of very small size, found in multiple late Neogene sites in southern and eastern Africa. Despite its wide geographic distribution and ...

Cainochoerus is an extinct suid (Mammalia, Artiodactyla) taxon of very small size, found in multiple late Neogene sites in southern and eastern Africa. Despite its wide geographic distribution and ...

The American Museum of Natural History is one of the world’s preeminent scientific and cultural institutions, and has as its mission to discover, interpret and disseminate information about human cult...

RealClimate: The EPA, along with the "Climate Working Group" (CWG) of usual suspects (plus Judith Curry and Ross McKitrick) at DOE, have just put out a document for public comment their attempt to res...

The American Museum of Natural History is one of the world’s preeminent scientific and cultural institutions, and has as its mission to discover, interpret and disseminate information about human cult...

Analysis of data on six stable crops, capturing two-thirds of global crop calories, allows estimation of agricultural impacts and the potential of global producer adaptations to reduce output losses owing to climate change.

The judge accused the Trump administration of discriminating against minorities and L.G.B.T.Q. people and ordered the government to restore much of the funding.

Changes seen as a response to presidential directives on what research to fund

Comparisons of 87Sr/86Sr data from the tusk and molar enamel of a zoo elephant suggest that a microsampling-modeling workflow is the best practice strategy for geospatial reconstructions of seasonal m...

White House aims to end NOAA’s research office; NASA also targeted

The reasons aren’t clear—and the agency’s director claims the president’s policies haven’t slowed grant awards

Teeth recovered from a beloved zoo elephant that died in 2008 are helping University of Utah geologists develop a method for tracking the movements of large herbivores across landscapes, even for animals now extinct, such as mastodons and mammoths.

Institute of Museum and Library Services now run by Department of Labor as part of proposed dismantling

Comparisons of 87Sr/86Sr data from the tusk and molar enamel of a zoo elephant suggest that a microsampling-modeling workflow is the best practice strategy for geospatial reconstructions of seasonal m...

Utah geologists show how strontium isotopes found in teeth or tusks reveal where large plant-eating animals have roamed.

This workshop introduces early career scholars to the grant review process through mock review exercises with experienced panelists and representatives from Leakey and Wenner-Gren. Date and Time: Marc...

As US federal grants remain frozen and budget cuts loom, anxiety and fear grip early-career researchers.

In September 2008, a well-loved African elephant named Misha fell ill and had to be put down at the Hogle Zoo of Salt Lake City Utah. It turns out that Misha had quite a story to tell, about her epic ...

Comparisons of 87Sr/86Sr data from the tusk and molar enamel of a zoo elephant suggest that a microsampling-modeling workflow is the best practice strategy for geospatial reconstructions of seasonal m...