Numerous workers have recognized that microscopic wear on the incisors and molars of primates reflects tooth use and diet. For example, those primates that often use their front teeth in ingestion have high densities of microwear striations on their incisors. Furthermore, folivores have a high incidences of long narrow scratches on their molars, whereas frugivores have more pits on those surfaces. Among frugivores, hard-object feeders have even higher pit incidences than soft-fruit eaters. These and other relationships between microwear and feeding behaviors in living primates have been used to infer diet in fossil forms. Miocene apes have a remarkable range of microwear patterning, greatly exceeding that of living hominoids. For example, relatively high scratch densities suggest that
Micropithecus, Rangwapithecus, and especially
Oreopithecus (
66) included more leaves in their diets. In contrast, high pit percentages suggest that
Griphopithecus and
Ouranopithecus (
66) were hard-object specialists. Finally, intermediate microwear patterns suggest that most other species studied, such as
Gigantopithecus,
Dendropithecus,
Proconsul, Dryopithecus, and, perhaps,
Sivapithecus (
66–
68), had diets dominated by soft fruits. These data give us a glimpse of the extraordinary variation from which the last common ancestor of apes and hominids evidently arose.
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