Quantifying the impact of µCT-scanning of human fossil teeth on ESR age results.

Fossil human teeth are nowadays systematically CT-scanned by palaeoanthropologists prior to any further analysis. It has been recently demonstrated that this noninvasive technique has, in most cases, virtually no influence on ancient DNA preservation. However, it may have nevertheless an impact on other techniques, like Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) dating, by artificially ageing the apparent age of the sample. To evaluate this impact, we µCT-scanned several modern enamel fragments following the standard analytical procedures employed by the Dental Anthropology Group at CENIEH, Spain, and then performed ESR dose reconstruction for each of them. The results of our experiment demonstrate that the systematic high-resolution µCT-scanning of fossil hominin remains introduces a nonnegligible X-ray dose into the tooth enamel, equivalent to 15-30 Gy depending on the parameters used. This dose may be multiplied by a factor of ∼8 if no metallic filter is used. However, this dose estimate cannot be universally extrapolated to any µCT-scan experiment but has instead to be specifically assessed for each device and set of parameters employed. The impact on the ESR age results is directly dependent on the magnitude of the geological dose measured in fossil enamel but could potentially lead to an age overestimation up to 40% in case of Late Pleistocene samples, if not taken into consideration.

Paleomicrobiology Data: Authentification and Interpretation.

The authenticity of some of the very first works in the field of paleopathology has been questioned, and standards have been progressively established for the experiments and the interpretation of data. Whereas most problems initially arose from the contamination of ancient specimens with modern human DNA, the situation is different in the field of paleomicrobiology, in which the risk for contamination is well-known and adequately managed by any laboratory team with expertise in the routine diagnosis of modern-day infections. Indeed, the exploration of ancient microbiota and pathogens is best done by such laboratory teams, with research directed toward the discovery and implementation of new techniques and the interpretation of data.

Phylogeny, paleontology, and primates: do incomplete fossils bias the tree of life?

Paleontological systematics relies heavily on morphological data that have undergone decay and fossilization. Here, we apply a heuristic means to assess how a fossil's incompleteness detracts from inferring its phylogenetic relationships. We compiled a phylogenetic matrix for primates and simulated the extinction of living species by deleting an extant taxon's molecular data and keeping only those morphological characters present in actual fossils. The choice of characters present in a given living taxon (the subject) was defined by those present in a given fossil (the template). By measuring congruence between a well-corroborated phylogeny to those incorporating artificial fossils, and by comparing real vs. random character distributions and states, we tested the information content of paleontological datasets and determined if extinction of a living species leads to bias in phylogeny reconstruction. We found a positive correlation between fossil completeness and topological congruence. Real fossil templates sampled for 36 or more of the 360 available morphological characters (including dental) performed significantly better than similarly complete templates with random states. Templates dominated by only one partition performed worse than templates with randomly sampled characters across partitions. The template based on the Eocene primate Darwinius masillae performs better than most other templates with a similar number of sampled characters, likely due to preservation of data across multiple partitions. Our results support the interpretation that Darwinius is strepsirhine, not haplorhine, and suggest that paleontological datasets are reliable in primate phylogeny reconstruction.

Immuno-PCR--a new tool for paleomicrobiology: the plague paradigm.

BACKGROUND: The cause of past plague pandemics was controversial but several research teams used PCR techniques and dental pulp as the primary material to reveal that they were caused by Yersinia pestis. However, the degradation of DNA limits the ability to detect ancient infections. METHODS: We used for the first time immuno-PCR to detect Yersinia pestis antigens; it can detect protein concentrations 70 times lower than the standard ELISA. After determining the cut-off value, we tested 34 teeth that were obtained from mass graves of plague, and compared previous PCR results with ELISA and immuno-PCR results. RESULTS: The immuno-PCR technique was the most sensitive (14 out of 34) followed by the PCR technique (10 out of 34) and ELISA (3 out of 34). The combination of these three methods identified 18 out of 34 (53%) teeth as presumably being from people with the plague. CONCLUSION: Immuno-PCR is specific (no false-positive samples were found) and more sensitive than the currently used method to detect antigens of ancient infections in dental pulp. The combination of three methods, ELISA, PCR and immuno-PCR, increased the capacity to identify ancient pathogens in dental pulp.

Fossil quality and naming dinosaurs.

The intense interest in dinosaurs through the past 30 years might have led to an increase in poor practice in naming new species. A review of the data shows that the reverse is the case. For 130 years, from the 1820s to the 1950s, most new species of dinosaurs were based on scrappy and incomplete material. After 1960, the majority of new species have been based on complete skulls or skeletons, and sometimes on materials from several individuals. This switch in the quality of type specimens corresponds to the recent explosive renaissance of interest in dinosaurs, during which the number of new species named per year has risen, from three or four in the 1950s, to thirty or more today. The pattern of specimen quality varies by continent, with the highest proportion of new species based on good material in North America, then Asia, then South America, then Africa and finally Europe. This ranking reflects a complex pattern of perhaps overstudy in Europe, immensely rich reserves of new dinosaur materials in North America and Asia, and a relative paucity in South America and Africa.

Dental morphology and variation in theropod dinosaurs: implications for the taxonomic identification of isolated teeth.

Isolated theropod teeth are common Mesozoic fossils and would be an important data source for paleoecology biogeography if they could be reliably identified as having come from particular taxa. However, obtaining identifications is confounded by a paucity of easily identifiable characters. Here we discuss a quantitative methodology designed to provide defensible identifications of isolated teeth using Tyrannosaurus as a comparison taxon. We created a standard data set based as much as possible on teeth of known taxonomic affinity against which to compare isolated crowns. Tooth morphology was described using measured variables describing crown length, base length and width, and derived variables related to basal shape, squatness, mesial curve shape, apex location with respect to base, and denticle size. Crown curves were described by fitting the power function Y = a + bX(0.5) to coordinate data collected from lateral-view images of mesial curve profiles. The b value from these analyses provides a measure of curvature. Discriminant analyses compared isolated teeth of various taxonomic affinities against the standard. The analyses classified known Tyrannosaurus teeth with Tyrannosaurus and separated most teeth known not to be Tyrannosaurus from Tyrannosaurus. They had trouble correctly classifying teeth that were very similar to Tyrannosaurus and for which there were few data in the standard. However, the results indicate that expanding the standard should facilitate the identification of numerous types of isolated theropod teeth.