Monday, April 17, 2017

Dental plaque leads to news about Neanderthal diet



Research done by  Laura Weyrich, a microbiologist at the University of Adelaide in Australia, has shown that plaque found in fossilized teeth proves that Neanderthal diets were a wide range of things. DNA was recovered from calcified plaque on teeth from four Neanderthal individuals. Two groups were found, one from the grasslands and one in the forests. The DNA from the individuals around the grasslands proved to eat woolly rhinoceros and wild sheep and the DNA from forests showed to eat moss, mushrooms and pine nuts. This shows that Neanderthals were neither vegetarian or herbivores. Also found in the DNA were materials from trees that act as aspirin. Any information found in fossils is truly amazing. To further our knowledge on the cavemen, helps us understand evolution and how we are today. This article shows that the Neanderthals were very smart, and knew about medicine way before we thought they did. This is a major break through for us. 



Article: https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker/ancient-dental-plaque-tells-tales-neandertal-diet-and-disease
Related article: http://www.pnas.org/content/108/2/486.full.pdf

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