IPHES-CERCA promotes an international volume on dental microwear to reconstruct the diet of vertebrates from the past

Teeth preserve part of the history of what we eat. Small scratches, pits and other microscopic marks produced during chewing can provide highly precise information about the foods consumed by an animal shortly before its death. The study of these traces, known as dental microwear, has become one of the most powerful tools for reconstructing the diet and ecology of both living and extinct species, and even for understanding how they responded to major environmental changes in the past.

This is the perspective presented in the new special issue of the scientific journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, entitled Advancing dental microwear analysis for dietary reconstruction: From dinosaurs to mammals.

The special issue brings together 24 contributions spanning more than 150 million years of vertebrate evolution, from Jurassic dinosaurs to present-day mammals, with studies from North and South America, Europe, Africa and Asia.

The volume was edited by Florent Rivals, María-Fernanda Martínez-Polanco, Iván Ramírez-Pedraza and Cristian Micó. Florent Rivals is an ICREA Research Professor at IPHES-CERCA; María-Fernanda Martínez-Polanco and Iván Ramírez-Pedraza are affiliated researchers at IPHES-CERCA.

A microscopic record of the last diet

The principle behind dental microwear is relatively simple: when an animal chews, food and the abrasive particles associated with it interact with the enamel, leaving microscopic marks. Analysing the shape, quantity and distribution of these marks provides information about the properties of the foods consumed and therefore makes it possible to reconstruct aspects of diet.

One of the distinctive features of this approach is that microwear primarily records what an animal ate during the final days or weeks of its life. This makes it particularly useful when combined with other techniques that provide information over different timescales, such as dental mesowear or stable isotope analysis.

One of the strengths of the new volume is precisely its methodological diversity. The studies range from low-magnification microwear analysis to Dental Microwear Texture Analysis (DMTA), which enables the quantitative characterisation of the three-dimensional texture of the enamel surface, as well as the use of scanning electron microscopy (SEM). In several studies, these techniques are complemented by mesowear, stable isotopes, enamel microstructure analysis, morphometrics and even machine-learning methodologies.

This combination makes it possible to go far beyond simply identifying what a species ate. The 24 studies address questions such as dietary specialisation and flexibility, ecological niche partitioning, seasonal resource use, palaeoenvironmental change and species responses to climatic transformations.

 

From dinosaurs to mammoths, primates, rodents and carnivores

The broad chronological and taxonomic scope is one of the volume’s main distinguishing features. The studies analyse dinosaurs, primates, rodents, carnivores, proboscideans and different groups of ungulates, combining fossil and archaeological populations with living species that provide a reference for interpreting the past record.

Among the most striking examples is the application of microwear analysis to dinosaurs. One study examines differences in dental wear between juvenile Maiasaura specimens and adult hadrosaurs. Juveniles display patterns consistent with softer, more nutritious foods, whereas adults show wear associated with a more fibrous plant-based diet. The authors suggest that these differences could provide indirect evidence of prolonged parental care, with adults supplying juveniles with higher-quality plant foods.

Other studies reconstruct topics ranging from the diets of early African proboscideans to dietary changes among Plio-Pleistocene primates, the dietary flexibility of reindeer during the last glaciation, and the diets of Columbian mammoths from Mexico.

Overall, the results show that dietary flexibility was much more common among extinct vertebrates than traditionally thought, and that this adaptive capacity played an important role in how species responded to climatic instability, ecological competition and changes in resource availability.

Significant participation by IPHES-CERCA

IPHES-CERCA’s participation in the volume is reflected both in its scientific editing and in several of the published studies.

1) Dietary reconstruction of Mammuthus columbi from Tultepec, Estado de México, México: a multiproxy approach

Authors: Susana Rodríguez-Franco, Víctor Adrián Pérez-Crespo, Christina I. Barrón-Ortiz, Luis Morett-Alatorre, Joaquín Arroyo-Cabrales, Florent Rivals, Edith Cienfuegos-Alvarado, Francisco J. Otero and Alan U. Loredo-Jasso.

The study combines microwear, mesowear and stable isotope analysis, indicators that record diet over different timescales. The results reveal substantial individual and seasonal variability and highlight the remarkable ecological flexibility of these mammoths in response to the local availability of resources.

2) Dental wear analysis of Early Pleistocene ungulates from Quibas (Murcia, Spain): A comparative perspective with other Iberian sites

Authors: Iván Ramírez-Pedraza, Jordi Agustí and Pedro Piñero.

The study analyses Early Pleistocene ungulates from the Quibas site. The combination of microwear and mesowear reveals seasonal variations in diet and resource partitioning among herbivores living together in a heterogeneous Mediterranean landscape.

3) Dietary ecology of neotropical brocket deer: Evidence from mesowear and microwear analyses

Author: María Fernanda Martínez-Polanco.

This study focuses on eight living species of Neotropical deer. It shows how mesowear reflects longer-term dietary strategies, while microwear can detect local and short-term variations. In addition to providing a comparative framework for studying fossil deer, the results may have applications in the conservation biology of species that are difficult to observe directly in the wild.

4) Dental microwear in extant rodents: An experimental and wild perspective for application to fossil populations

Authors: Raymundo Cervantes-Barriga, Alejandro Hiram Marín-Leyva, Florent Rivals, Joaquín Arroyo-Cabrales, Tiberio C. Monterrubio-Rico and Javier Ponce-Saavedra.

The research combines controlled feeding experiments with the study of wild rodent populations from different environments in Mexico, creating a reference framework linking microwear patterns to the characteristics of food and vegetation. This approach reinforces the potential of small mammals as high-resolution indicators of palaeoenvironments.

An increasingly integrative discipline

One of the main conclusions of the volume is that the study of dental wear is no longer a technique focused almost exclusively on reconstructing the diets of large herbivorous mammals. It is now also applied to carnivores, omnivores, small mammals, primates, dinosaurs and semi-aquatic species, making it possible to investigate questions related to behaviour, evolution and environmental change.

According to the editors, the future of the field lies in continuing to advance methodological standardisation, experimental validation and the expansion of modern reference collections, while incorporating new tools such as three-dimensional surface analysis, automated image processing and machine learning.

Dental microwear is therefore becoming established as a cross-disciplinary tool connecting palaeontology, archaeology, functional ecology and, increasingly, conservation biology, allowing researchers to reconstruct with exceptional resolution how vertebrates fed and how they responded to environmental changes over more than 150 million years of evolutionary history.

Bibliographic reference

Editorial preface to special issue: Advancing dental microwear analysis for dietary reconstruction: From dinosaurs to mammals (2026). Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 114144. DOI: 10.1016/j.palaeo.2026.114144.