Population studies on Southwestern Indian tribes V. Tooth morphology as an indicator of biological distance

The value of phylogenetic comparisons between populations based on tooth morphology depends on a knowledge of the extent to which the observed morphological variation is genetic in origin. This knowledge can be derived unequivocally only from the analysis of family data. However, in the absence of such knowledge the ability of tooth morphology to distinguish biological differences can be evaluated directly by testing its discriminating power in practice on populations between which the degrees of genetic difference are already known. The results of such an evaluation show that different degrees of subjectivity of scoring are associated with different characters, but that moderately good correspondence between known genetic differences and differences based on tooth morphology can be achieved when characters showing the least subjectivity of scoring are used.