A mysterious type of pitting on the dental enamel of Paranthropus, a genus of extinct human relatives, has baffled experts for decades. But new research suggests the clusters of pits are genetic rather than evidence of a disease, making them key to further understanding the human family tree.
"Teeth preserve an incredible amount of biological and evolutionary information," study co-author Ian Towle, a researcher in the Palaeodiet Research Lab at Monash University in Australia, told Live Science. "This specific type of pitting might turn out to be a unique marker for certain evolutionary lineages, helping us identify fossils."
