ArticleNature2013
Barium distributions in teeth reveal early-life dietary transitions in primates.
Article in Nature, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 79 papers.
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Who cites it
79 citing papers in PubMed.
- Teeth as bioarchives of metallic trace elements: a systematic review.Biometals : an international journal on the role of metal ions in biology, biochemistry, and medicine · 2026Review
- Assessing preterm infant metal exposures in shed teeth: findings from the Developmental Impact of NICU Exposures (DINE) study.Journal of exposure science & environmental epidemiology · 2026Article
- Reading hominin life history in fossil bones and teeth: methods to test hypotheses regarding its evolution.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Continuous and prolonged breastfeeding in wild Bornean orangutans verified with fecal proteomics.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Adaptation and test-retest reliability of a mobile neurocognitive battery for assessing neurotoxicity in rural children in Bangladesh.Neurotoxicology · 2026Article
- Article
- Rule-out test for autism using machine-learning analysis of molecular temporal dynamics in hair - a multicenter study.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- Synchrotron X-ray Fluorescence Microscopy Reveals Trace Elemental Indicators of Life History in Marsupial Teeth.Biological trace element research · 2025Article
- Life history of a new Paraceratheriid from the Early Oligocene of Northwest China.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Dentin Metal and Trace Elements in Deciduous Teeth: Findings from Project Viva.Environmental science & technology · 2025Article
- Quantified retrospective biomonitoring of fetal and infant elemental exposure using LA-ICP-MS analysis of deciduous dentin in three contrasting human cohorts.Journal of exposure science & environmental epidemiology · 2024Article
- Deciduous teeth from the New Hampshire birth cohort study: Early life environmental and dietary predictors of dentin elements.Environmental research · 2024Article
- Differences in childhood stress between Neanderthals and early modern humans as reflected by dental enamel growth disruptions.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Hair and plasma cortisol throughout the first 3 years of development in infant rhesus macaques, Macaca mulatta.Developmental psychobiology · 2023Article
- Infant Feeding Practices and Metal Concentrations in Children's Blood.JAMA network open · 2023Article
- Stress exposure histories revealed by biochemical changes along accentuated lines in teeth.Chemosphere · 2023Article
- Deciduous tooth biomarkers reveal atypical fetal inflammatory regulation in autism spectrum disorder.iScience · 2023Article
- Microspatial distribution of trace elements in feline dental hard tissues: early life exposure to essential and toxic elements.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2023Article
- Brief Communication: Elemental Models of Primate Nursing and Weaning Revisited.American journal of biological anthropology · 2023Article
- A Neandertal dietary conundrum: Insights provided by tooth enamel Zn isotopes from Gabasa, Spain.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
19 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Early-life dietary transitions reflect fundamental aspects of primate evolution and are important determinants of health in contemporary human populations. Weaning is critical to developmental and reproductive rates; early weaning can have detrimental health effects but enables shorter inter-birth intervals, which influences population growth. Uncovering early-life dietary history in fossils is hampered by the absence of prospectively validated biomarkers that are not modified during fossilization. Here we show that large dietary shifts in early life manifest as compositional variations in dental tissues. Teeth from human children and captive macaques, with prospectively recorded diet histories, demonstrate that barium (Ba) distributions accurately reflect dietary transitions from the introduction of mother's milk through the weaning process. We also document dietary transitions in a Middle Palaeolithic juvenile Neanderthal, which shows a pattern of exclusive breastfeeding for seven months, followed by seven months of supplementation. After this point, Ba levels in enamel returned to baseline prenatal levels, indicating an abrupt cessation of breastfeeding at 1.2 years of age. Integration of Ba spatial distributions and histological mapping of tooth formation enables novel studies of the evolution of human life history, dietary ontogeny in wild primates, and human health investigations through accurate reconstructions of breastfeeding history.
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