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Barium distributions in teeth reveal early-life dietary transitions in primates
Open accessAbstract
Early-life dietary transitions reflect fundamental aspects of primate evolution and are important determinants of health in contemporary human populations. Weaning is critical to developmental and reproductive rates; early weaning can have detrimental health effects but enables shorter inter-birth intervals, which influences population growth. Uncovering early-life dietary history in fossils is hampered by the absence of prospectively validated biomarkers that are not modified during fossilization. Here we show that large dietary shifts in early life manifest as compositional variations in dental tissues. Teeth from human children and captive macaques, with prospectively recorded diet histories, demonstrate that barium (Ba) distributions accurately reflect dietary transitions from the introduction of mother's milk through the weaning process. We also document dietary transitions in a Middle Palaeolithic juvenile Neanderthal, which shows a pattern of exclusive breastfeeding for seven months, followed by seven months of supplementation. After this point, Ba levels in enamel returned to baseline prenatal levels, indicating an abrupt cessation of breastfeeding at 1.2 years of age. Integration of Ba spatial distributions and histological mapping of tooth formation enables novel studies of the evolution of human life history, dietary ontogeny in wild primates, and human health investigations through accurate reconstructions of breastfeeding history.
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“The observed metal distributions were in agreement with previous studies using tooth-matrix biomarkers1419.”
From Fetal and postnatal metal dysregulation in autism (2017) · cites this paper as [19]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Austin, C., Smith, T. M., Bradman, A., Hinde, K., Joannes-Boyau, R., Bishop, D., Hare, D. J., Doble, P., Eskenazi, B., & Arora, M.
- Affiliations
- The University of Sydney (AU)
- Harvard University (US)
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
- Southern Cross University (AU)
- University of Technology Sydney (AU)
- Corresponding author
- Arora, Manish
- ORCID
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 2013-05-22
- Volume
- 498
- Issue
- 7453
- Pages
- 216-219
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- PMC
- PMC3725337
- OpenAlex
- W2102110053
- Cited by
- 234
- References
- 34
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 16 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 25 · 2020: 21 · 2019: 16 · 2018: 19 · 2017: 26 · 2016: 15 · 2015: 18 · 2014: 16 · 2013: 4
- FWCI
- 82.53
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Nature (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) (Harvard University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Cross Connect (Southern Cross University) (submittedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Minerva Access (University of Melbourne) (submittedVersion)
- UTS ePRESS (University of Technology Sydney) (submittedVersion)
- Griffith Research Online (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (0921978)
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (RD83171001, RD-82670901, PO1 ES009605)
- Max-Planck-Institut für Evolutionäre Anthropologie
- Australian Research Council (LP100200254, DP120101752)
- National Health and Medical Research Council (1028372)
- National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (R00ES019597, P01ES009605)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Anthropology › Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Archeology (arts and humanities) › Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Studies
- Social Sciences › Archeology › Archaeology and ancient environmental studies
- Keywords
- weaning, lactation, breastfeeding, nutrition transition, macaque, dental biomarkers, barium to calcium ratio, Middle Palaeolithic
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Animals, Barium, Breast Feeding, Calcium, Child, Preschool, Diet, Female, Fossils, Humans, Infant, Macaca, Tooth, Weaning, Reproducibility of Results, History, Ancient, Neanderthals
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