The splay of tooth roots reveals how South African hominins, Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus, chewed their food

Ever since the discovery of the fossil remains of Australopithecus africanus from Taung nearly a century ago, and subsequent discoveries of Paranthropus robustus, there have been disagreements about the diets of these two South African hominin species. By analysing the splay and orientation of fossil hominin tooth roots, an international team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (Germany), the University of Chile (Chile) and the University of Oxford (UK) now suggests that Paranthropus robustus had a unique way of chewing food not seen in other hominins, which seems to explain the unique suite of characters observed in this species.