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Enamel use wear of small carnivores: effects of magnification and scale
Author(s) -
Dewar Eric Walter,
Elder Carley E.,
Le Thuy,
Sharma Prashant
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.27.1_supplement.518.3
Subject(s) - enamel paint , biology , range (aeronautics) , zoology , carnivora , tooth wear , herbivore , omnivore , ecology , dentistry , predation , materials science , medicine , composite material , endocrinology
Living carnivorans have dietary preferences from strictly carnivorous and to broadly herbivorous diets. Some of the details of these diets are not predictable from dental morphology alone. We compared the enamel use wear of living carnivorans with a variety of known diets using stereoscopic and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). We developed a systematic description of enamel wear on the same specimens at a range of magnifications from 35× and 75× on the stereoscope to 150×, 250×, and 500× on the SEM. Both microscopes and a range of magnifications were able to resolve differences among dietary types. Stereoscopic observations of carnivoran teeth revealed roughly similar counts of wear features despite the differences in sampling area. Using the SEM, differences in the appearance of wear is more apparent, particularly in number and depth of enamel scratches. We found that divergent microwear within species represented meal‐to‐meal vs. seasonally‐variable styles of omnivory. We expect that some species of mustelids (skunks and other weasels) and small canids (especially foxes) can be used as a baseline against which we can compare the wear of several species of the earliest Carnivora from the Eocene.