Dental morphology across the tooth row: Geometric morphometric analysis of multiple tooth positions, reconstruction of missing teeth, and implications for hominin taxonomy.

Our understanding of human evolution depends on reliable taxonomic identification of fossils and an understanding of their phylogenetic relationships.

Teeth are a key source of evidence: they are well-preserved in the fossil record and their morphology is under strong genetic control.

State-of-the-art methods involve 3D morphological analysis of internal dental structures, but due to statistical challenges and fossils frequently missing teeth, these analyses focus on each tooth position individually.

This means that important aspects of variation across the tooth row are not captured, and as a result, key issues in hominin systematics remain unresolved.TOOTHROW will overcome these limitations by developing a novel methodological framework to analyse the morphology of the entire tooth row in a single analysis, even in incomplete specimens.

I will use cutting-edge geometric morphometrics and multivariate statistics to estimate the morphology of teeth missing from fossil specimens, providing a powerful reconstruction tool.

Morphological analysis of the complete dental arcade will be developed and tested on large extant hominoid samples, before being applied to two fossil hominins: Homo habilis and Homo naledi.

Both species are central to our understanding of human evolution, yet the relationship between them and other hominins remains unresolved.The R-based analytical toolkit developed by TOOTHROW will advance applications of geometric morphometrics to include multiple skeletal elements, with applications in fields such as palaeontology, vertebrate morphology and forensics.

The University of Vienna, home to a leading competence centre in morphometrics, and embedded in large networks of anthropological and evolutionary research, is the ideal host for this project.

Results will be disseminated to a broad range of audiences through scientific conferences, publications in high-impact open access journals, an open-source R toolkit and outreach activities.