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Published online on August 7, 2007, 10.1073/pnas.0706152104
PNAS | August 14, 2007 | vol. 104 | no. 33 | 13279-13282


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BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES / ANTHROPOLOGY
Dental evidence on the hominin dispersals during the Pleistocene

M. Martinón-Torres*,{dagger}, J. M. Bermúdez de Castro*, A. Gómez-Robles*, J. L. Arsuaga{ddagger},{dagger}, E. Carbonell§, D. Lordkipanidze, G. Manzi||, and A. Margvelashvili*,¶

*Centro Nacional de Investigación Sobre la Evolución Humana, Avenida de la Paz 28, 09004 Burgos, Spain; {ddagger}Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Centro de Evolución y Comportamiento Humanos, Sinesio Delgado 4, Pabellón 14, 28029 Madrid, Spain; §Área de Prehistoria, Departamento de Historia y Geografía, Universidad Rovira i Virgili, Plaza Imperial Tarraco, 43005 Tarragona, Spain; Georgian National Museum, 3 Purtseladze Street, Tbilisi 380007, Republic of Georgia; and ||Dipartimento di Biologia Animale e dell'Uomo, Università La Sapienza, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Rome, Italy

Contributed by J. L. Arsuaga, July 3, 2007 (received for review January 24, 2007)

A common assumption in the evolutionary scenario of the first Eurasian hominin populations is that they all had an African origin. This assumption also seems to apply for the Early and Middle Pleistocene populations, whose presence in Europe has been largely explained by a discontinuous flow of African emigrant waves. Only recently, some voices have speculated about the possibility of Asia being a center of speciation. However, no hard evidence has been presented to support this hypothesis. We present evidence from the most complete and up-to-date analysis of the hominin permanent dentition from Africa and Eurasia. The results show important morphological differences between the hominins found in both continents during the Pleistocene, suggesting that their evolutionary courses were relatively independent. We propose that the genetic impact of Asia in the colonization of Europe during the Early and Middle Pleistocene was stronger than that of Africa.

Eurasia | teeth

Author contributions: M.M.-T. and J.M.B.d.C. designed research; M.M.-T. and J.M.B.d.C. performed research; M.M.-T., J.M.B.d.C., A.G.-R., J.L.A., E.C., D.L., G.M., and A.M. analyzed data; and M.M.-T. wrote the paper.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0706152104/DC1.

{dagger}To whom correspondence may be addressed. E-mail: maria.martinon.torres{at}gmail.com or jlarsuaga{at}isciii.es

© 2007 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA


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