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Over the last decade, Africa has taken a central position in the search for the timing and mechanisms leading to modern human origins, and the rich archaeological and human paleontological record of North Africa is critical to this search. In this volume, we bring together new research into the archaeology, human paleontology, chronology, and environmental context of modern human origins in North Africa. The result is a volume that better integrates the North African record into the modern human origins debate and at the same time highlights the research questions that are currently the focus of continued work in the area.​

Michael P. Richards and Jean-Jacques Hublin The study of hominin diets, and especially how they have (primates, modern humans), (2) faunal and plant studies, (3) evolved throughout time, has long been a core research archaeology and paleoanthropology, and (4) isotopic studies. area in archaeology and paleoanthropology, but it is also This volume therefore presents research articles by most of becoming an important research area in other fields such as these participants that are mainly based on their presentations primatology, nutrition science, and evolutionary medicine. at the symposium. As can hopefully be seen in the volume, Although this is a fundamental research topic, much of the these papers provide important reviews of the current research research continues to be undertaken by specialists and there in these areas, as well as often present new research on dietary is, with some notable exceptions (e. g., Stanford and Bunn, evolution. 2001; Ungar and Teaford, 2002; Ungar, 2007) relatively lit- In the section on modern studies Hohmann provides a tle interaction with other researchers in other fields. This is review of the diets of non-human primates, including an unfortunate, as recently it has appeared that different lines interesting discussion of the role of food-sharing amongst of evidence are causing similar conclusions about the major these primates. Snodgrass, Leonard, and Roberston provide issues of hominid dietary evolution (i. e.

S. E. BAILEY Department of Human Evolution Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Deutscher Platz 6 D-04103 Leipzig, Germany and Center for the Study of Human Origins, Department of Anthropology, New York University, 25 Waverly Place New York, NY 10003, USA sbailey@nyu. edu J. -J. HUBLIN Department of Human Evolution Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Deutscher Platz 6 D-04103 Leipzig, Germany hublin@eva. mpg. de When faced with choosing a topic to as teeth represent, by far, the most abundant be the focus of the first symposium material documenting different species of in Human Evolution at the Max Planck extinct non-human primates and hominins. As Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in such, much of what we know about non- Leipzig, a paleoanthropological perspective human primate and hominin evolution is based of dental anthropology was a natural choice. on teeth. Teeth make up a disproportionate number Teeth have been a focus of interest for of the fossils discovered. They represent physical anthropologists over many gen- strongly mineralized organs of compact shape, ations. Teeth provide a multitude of which allow better preservation in geological information about humans – including deposits and archaeological sites than any cultural treatment, pathology, morphological other part of the skeleton. As a result, variation, and development. The presence of since the discoveries of the first fossils of culturally induced wear (toothpick grooves, extinct species, vertebrate paleontology has for example) reveals something about what been built primarily on analyses of teeth.