The inhibitory cascade natural rule dictates a tooth’s size in accordance to the one next to it.
(Mirror Daily, United States) – There were times in which early humans hunted and ate their food with much sharper teeth than what we have today. It would have been much easier for them to chew on that pesky beef jerky because they were used to put their teeth into action. But as tools started to become fancier, the inhibitory cascade affected the evolution of our teeth, making them smaller.
The natural process that decides the size of teeth by comparing them to the ones next to them, the inhibitory cascade affected the evolution of our teeth, especially of the wisdom teeth.
According to the latest research in evolutionary biology, the inhibitory cascade affected the evolution of our teeth and the process began somewhere along the time when the first Homo appeared.
Alistair Evans, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Monash, Australia who is in charge of the research declared that the study will help future researchers better analyze the lifestyles of our ancestors that lived millions of years ago.
Evans added that the inhibitory cascade will also help anthropologists, archaeologists and evolutionary biologists to construct more accurate computer models based on the fragments of skulls that they find on the field.
Now that they know how the inhibitory cascade works they will be able to better interpret the data that is already gathered and future fossils.
In order to reach the conclusion that the inhibitory cascade affected the evolution of our teeth, Evans and his team spent decades analyzing hominins fossils and 3D reconstructed fossil teeth.
All of the data gathered was compared to two groups of the hominins species the australopiths and the genus Homo.
The comparison showed that both hominins species followed the natural rule of the inhibitory cascade, but with small differences.
This incredible discovery will help the researchers reconstruct the entire head of a fossil based on only a few teeth.
Evans also declared that their study not only shines a new light on the interpretation of teeth evolution but also shows that the evolutionary pattern was much simpler than they suspected.
A previous report that was published by Discovery News stated that our wisdom teeth are now significantly smaller and sometimes inexistent because the humans adapted to the use of tools. Knives and such other primitive instruments lead to a better food processing and thus a lack of an extra pair of teeth.
Slowly, humans started to improve their tools and wisdom teeth were no longer useful so they faded, growing smaller and smaller.
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