Skip to main content

Main menu

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Special Feature Articles - Most Recent
    • Special Features
    • Colloquia
    • Collected Articles
    • PNAS Classics
    • List of Issues
  • Front Matter
    • Front Matter Portal
    • Journal Club
  • News
    • For the Press
    • This Week In PNAS
    • PNAS in the News
  • Podcasts
  • Authors
    • Information for Authors
    • Editorial and Journal Policies
    • Submission Procedures
    • Fees and Licenses
  • Submit
  • Submit
  • About
    • Editorial Board
    • PNAS Staff
    • FAQ
    • Accessibility Statement
    • Rights and Permissions
    • Site Map
  • Contact
  • Journal Club
  • Subscribe
    • Subscription Rates
    • Subscriptions FAQ
    • Open Access
    • Recommend PNAS to Your Librarian

User menu

  • Log in
  • My Cart

Search

  • Advanced search
Home
Home
  • Log in
  • My Cart

Advanced Search

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Special Feature Articles - Most Recent
    • Special Features
    • Colloquia
    • Collected Articles
    • PNAS Classics
    • List of Issues
  • Front Matter
    • Front Matter Portal
    • Journal Club
  • News
    • For the Press
    • This Week In PNAS
    • PNAS in the News
  • Podcasts
  • Authors
    • Information for Authors
    • Editorial and Journal Policies
    • Submission Procedures
    • Fees and Licenses
  • Submit
Research Article

Assessing human weaning practices with calcium isotopes in tooth enamel

Théo Tacail, Béatrice Thivichon-Prince, Jeremy E. Martin, Cyril Charles, Laurent Viriot, and View ORCID ProfileVincent Balter
  1. aLaboratoire de Géologie de Lyon: Terre, Planètes, et Environnement, Université de Lyon, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Université Lyon 1, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Unité Mixte de Recherche 5276, 69364 Lyon, France;
  2. bTeam Evolution of Vertebrate Dentition, Institut de Génomique Fonctionnelle de Lyon, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Unité Mixte de Recherche 5242, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, 69364 Lyon, France;
  3. cFaculté d’Odontologie, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, 69372 Lyon, France;
  4. dService d’Odontologie, Hospices Civils de Lyon, 69008 Lyon, France

See allHide authors and affiliations

PNAS June 13, 2017 114 (24) 6268-6273; first published May 30, 2017; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1704412114
Théo Tacail
aLaboratoire de Géologie de Lyon: Terre, Planètes, et Environnement, Université de Lyon, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Université Lyon 1, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Unité Mixte de Recherche 5276, 69364 Lyon, France;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: theo.tacail@ens-lyon.fr
Béatrice Thivichon-Prince
bTeam Evolution of Vertebrate Dentition, Institut de Génomique Fonctionnelle de Lyon, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Unité Mixte de Recherche 5242, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, 69364 Lyon, France;
cFaculté d’Odontologie, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, 69372 Lyon, France;
dService d’Odontologie, Hospices Civils de Lyon, 69008 Lyon, France
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Jeremy E. Martin
aLaboratoire de Géologie de Lyon: Terre, Planètes, et Environnement, Université de Lyon, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Université Lyon 1, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Unité Mixte de Recherche 5276, 69364 Lyon, France;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Cyril Charles
bTeam Evolution of Vertebrate Dentition, Institut de Génomique Fonctionnelle de Lyon, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Unité Mixte de Recherche 5242, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, 69364 Lyon, France;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Laurent Viriot
bTeam Evolution of Vertebrate Dentition, Institut de Génomique Fonctionnelle de Lyon, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Unité Mixte de Recherche 5242, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, 69364 Lyon, France;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Vincent Balter
aLaboratoire de Géologie de Lyon: Terre, Planètes, et Environnement, Université de Lyon, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Université Lyon 1, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Unité Mixte de Recherche 5276, 69364 Lyon, France;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Vincent Balter
  1. Edited by Richard G. Klein, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, and approved April 26, 2017 (received for review March 16, 2017)

  • Article
  • Figures & SI
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF
Loading

Significance

The practice of weaning, the dietary transition from exclusive breastfeeding to exclusive nonmilk food, is a key aspect of development and evolution of hominins, but its study in the fossil record is hampered by a lack of unambiguous biomarkers. Ca stable isotope ratios of skeletal remains are expected to bear information about milk consumption. Here we demonstrate that modern human tooth enamel records a temporal variation of Ca isotope compositions, which is related to breastfeeding duration. Ca isotopes could be used as a biomarker for reconstruction of weaning practices in past human and fossil hominin species.

Abstract

Weaning practices differ among great apes and likely diverged during the course of human evolution, but behavioral inference from the fossil record is hampered by a lack of unambiguous biomarkers. Here, we show that early-life dietary transitions are recorded in human deciduous tooth enamel as marked variations in Ca isotope ratios (δ44/42Ca). Using a sequential microsampling method along the enamel growth axis, we collected more than 150 enamel microsamples from 51 deciduous teeth of 12 different modern human individuals of known dietary histories, as well as nine enamel samples from permanent third molars. We measured and reconstructed the evolution of 44Ca/42Ca ratios in enamel from in utero development to first months of postnatal development. We show that the observed variations of δ44/42Ca record a transition from placental nutrition to an adult-like diet and that Ca isotopes reflect the duration of the breastfeeding period experienced by each infant. Typically, the δ44/42Ca values of individuals briefly or not breastfed show a systematic increase during the first 5–10 mo, whereas individuals with long breastfeeding histories display no measurable variation in δ44/42Ca of enamel formed during this time. The use of Ca isotope analysis in tooth enamel allows microsampling and offers an independent approach to tackle challenging questions related to past population dynamics and evolution of weaning practices in hominins.

  • calcium isotopes
  • tooth enamel
  • dietary transitions
  • weaning
  • breast milk

Footnotes

  • ↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: theo.tacail{at}ens-lyon.fr.
  • Author contributions: J.E.M., C.C., L.V., and V.B. designed research; T.T. and B.T.-P. performed research; T.T. analyzed data; and T.T., B.T.-P., J.E.M., C.C., L.V., and V.B. wrote the paper.

  • The authors declare no conflict of interest.

  • This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.

  • This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1704412114/-/DCSupplemental.

View Full Text
PreviousNext
Back to top
Article Alerts
Email Article

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on PNAS.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Assessing human weaning practices with calcium isotopes in tooth enamel
(Your Name) has sent you a message from PNAS
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the PNAS web site.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Citation Tools
Assessing human weaning practices with Ca isotopes
Théo Tacail, Béatrice Thivichon-Prince, Jeremy E. Martin, Cyril Charles, Laurent Viriot, Vincent Balter
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Jun 2017, 114 (24) 6268-6273; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1704412114

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Request Permissions
Share
Assessing human weaning practices with Ca isotopes
Théo Tacail, Béatrice Thivichon-Prince, Jeremy E. Martin, Cyril Charles, Laurent Viriot, Vincent Balter
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Jun 2017, 114 (24) 6268-6273; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1704412114
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Mendeley logo Mendeley

Article Classifications

  • Biological Sciences
  • Anthropology
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: 114 (24)
Table of Contents

Submit

Sign up for Article Alerts

Jump to section

  • Article
    • Abstract
    • Results
    • Discussion
    • Materials
    • Methods
    • Sampling
    • Location of Spots and Measurement of Distance to Neonatal Line
    • Chemical Processing of Samples
    • MC-ICP-MS Analysis
    • Acknowledgments
    • Footnotes
    • References
  • Figures & SI
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF

You May Also be Interested in

Water from a faucet fills a glass.
News Feature: How “forever chemicals” might impair the immune system
Researchers are exploring whether these ubiquitous fluorinated molecules might worsen infections or hamper vaccine effectiveness.
Image credit: Shutterstock/Dmitry Naumov.
Reflection of clouds in the still waters of Mono Lake in California.
Inner Workings: Making headway with the mysteries of life’s origins
Recent experiments and simulations are starting to answer some fundamental questions about how life came to be.
Image credit: Shutterstock/Radoslaw Lecyk.
Cave in coastal Kenya with tree growing in the middle.
Journal Club: Small, sharp blades mark shift from Middle to Later Stone Age in coastal Kenya
Archaeologists have long tried to define the transition between the two time periods.
Image credit: Ceri Shipton.
Mouse fibroblast cells. Electron bifurcation reactions keep mammalian cells alive.
Exploring electron bifurcation
Jonathon Yuly, David Beratan, and Peng Zhang investigate how electron bifurcation reactions work.
Listen
Past PodcastsSubscribe
Panda bear hanging in a tree
How horse manure helps giant pandas tolerate cold
A study finds that giant pandas roll in horse manure to increase their cold tolerance.
Image credit: Fuwen Wei.

Similar Articles

Site Logo
Powered by HighWire
  • Submit Manuscript
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • RSS Feeds
  • Email Alerts

Articles

  • Current Issue
  • Special Feature Articles – Most Recent
  • List of Issues

PNAS Portals

  • Anthropology
  • Chemistry
  • Classics
  • Front Matter
  • Physics
  • Sustainability Science
  • Teaching Resources

Information

  • Authors
  • Editorial Board
  • Reviewers
  • Subscribers
  • Librarians
  • Press
  • Cozzarelli Prize
  • Site Map
  • PNAS Updates
  • FAQs
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Rights & Permissions
  • About
  • Contact

Feedback    Privacy/Legal

Copyright © 2021 National Academy of Sciences. Online ISSN 1091-6490