Teeth: The unsung heroes of the fossil record
Volunteer Spotlight: Samantha Gogol and Risa Luther celebrate Pride at the Bell Museum by daring you to “bare your teeth”
By Dr. Carrie Miller
The Twin Cities have celebrated Pride for over 50 years and it is one of the largest Pride celebrations in the country. Beginning with only 25 participants back in 1972, it has now reached a scale in which you have to pick and choose from the many events scattered across the city while still making it in time to get a good spot at the epic parade. For the last handful of years, the Bell Museum has opened their doors in celebration to highlight LGBTQ+ researchers from the University of Minnesota, and the incredible research they are conducting, through SciPride!
Photo of SciPride poster at the Bell Museum (taken by Risa Luther) and handout identifying different teeth (provided by Samantha Gogol).
This year, two long-time SASSAk12 volunteers, Samantha Gogol and Risa Luther, joined the ranks of scientists to celebrate Pride at the Bell Museum. In store for visitors were opportunities to learn about everything from bugs to brains to outer space! And how did Samantha and Risa share their research amidst this spectrum of diverse research and researchers? By sharing everything they know about teeth, of course! Samantha and Risa are both PhD candidates in the Anthropology Department at the University of Minnesota, and both use teeth in different ways to answer important questions about our evolutionary past. Teeth are among the most abundant materials found in the fossil record, and so they provide a treasure trove of information to learn about the lives of animals that have been dead for a very long time. For Samantha, this means identifying animal fossils, reconstructing their diets, and aging animal fossils based on the shape and growth patterns of their teeth. For Risa this means using the teeth of primate species still alive today, like chimpanzees and gorillas, to better understand the diets of primates who were alive millions of years ago.
Take a moment to test out your own skills and guess what the primates pictured below eat. After reading through the rest of the article, scroll to the see if you were right!
Our experts, Risa and Samantha, came prepared with skull casts of several mammals, primates, and fossil hominins (ancestors from our evolutionary past), along with some blown up 3-D printed scans of teeth to allow visitors to get an even closer look. With such an array of hands-on materials, visitors could come to Samantha to learn about some of the key differences in the dentition of predators (like lions, wolves, and hyenas), with their specialized scissor-like teeth (called carnassials) used to slice meat, and prey (like horses, cows, and deer), with their gigantic molars for munching on grass or leaves all day. At the other half of the table, Risa challenged visitors to take a close look at the teeth of the different primates to try to figure out what sorts of foods they ate based on the structure of their teeth - not always an easy task, especially for fossils that have undergone a lot of wear, or even for more recent primates who have worn their teeth down from chewing on tough foods for their entire lives.
(Photos of Samantha and Risa by Madelaine Walker)
As the Bell Museum filled with visitors throughout the day, Samantha and Risa shared their research with any and all of the 411 attendees who came by their colorful table covered in crania. With many “oohs” and “aahs” and “what in the world is that?!” adults and children alike got to see first hand how fascinating research in anthropology can be, and how even the tiniest details among the unsung heroes of the fossil record–teeth–can teach us about ourselves and many other animals to more fully reconstruct the history of our evolutionary past. Just imagine what else you might learn at SciPride next year!
For now, let’s see how you did on your guesses, junior anthropologists! And share your results on social media with #SASSAk12 to let us know what you got right, what you learned, and pose questions to our teeth experts!
