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A Faithful Record of Stressful Life Events Recorded in the Dental Developmental Record of a Juvenile Gorilla

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An Erratum to this article was published on 01 August 2006

An Erratum to this article was published on 01 August 2006

The pattern and rate of dental development are critical components of the life history of primates. Much recent research has focused on dental development in chimpanzees and other hominoids, but comparatively little is known about dental development in Gorilla. To date, dental chronologies for Gorilla are based on a sample of 1 and information about variations in the time and timing of crown initiation and completion is lacking. We provide data on dental development in 1 captive, juvenile, female, western lowland Gorilla gorilla gorilla of known age, sex, life events, and date of death (carefully documented as part of zoo records) that experienced various physical insults during her first year of life. The perfect natural experiment allowed us to test the association of the timing of accentuated stress lines in teeth with significant physiological and psychological events during ontogeny of this juvenile gorilla. We analyzed histological sections from 14 permanent teeth (maxillary and mandibular I1-M2) and assessed crown initiation (CI) and crown formation times (CFT) using short- and long-period incremental lines in both enamel and dentine; they are advanced for all teeth compared to previously published chronology. The data suggest a relatively accelerated pace of dental development in gorillas compared to chimpanzees and fit an emerging pattern of an accelerated life history schedule in gorillas. Data on the timing of major accentuated lines in the developing dentition are tightly associated with exact dates of surgical procedures and follow-up hospital visits as recorded on zoo medical records. Our data highlight the importance of captive individuals with well-documented medical records for studying life history.

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Notes

  1. Accentuated striae differ from normal striae in their optical properties when viewed under polarized light. Wilson bands are a special subset of accentuated striae that correspond to hypoplastic lesions on the external crown surface. Accentuated striae can occur between 2 successive, or be coincident with, normal striae.

  2. Other enclosure transfers were in the zoo records but were not associated with accentuated striae.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the Oklahoma City Zoo and Dr. Michael Barrie for their cooperation, the Social Sciences Division of the University of California at Santa Cruz (to A. L. Zihlman), the Leverhulme Trust (to M. C. Dean, G. T. Schwartz) for financial support, Pam Walton (Newcastle) for preparing the sections, and Tanya Smith for permission to use Fig. 2.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology and Institute of Human Origins, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA

    Gary T. Schwartz

  2. Department of Oral Biology, The Dental School, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE2 4BW, U.K

    Don J. Reid

  3. Evolutionary Anatomy Unit, Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology, University College, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, U.K

    M. Christopher Dean

  4. Department of Anthropology, University of California at Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California, USA

    Adrienne L. Zihlman

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  1. Gary T. Schwartz
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Correspondence to Gary T. Schwartz.

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An erratum to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10764-006-9069-5

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Schwartz, G.T., Reid, D.J., Dean, M.C. et al. A Faithful Record of Stressful Life Events Recorded in the Dental Developmental Record of a Juvenile Gorilla. Int J Primatol 27, 1201–1219 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10764-006-9051-2

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