ArticleJournal of anatomy2017
Enamel biorhythms of humans and great apes: the Havers-Halberg Oscillation hypothesis reconsidered.
Article in Journal of anatomy, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 21 citations in OpenAlex.
- Applicability of Retzius striae in forensic anthropology: a systematic review.International journal of legal medicine · 2026Pooled it
- "An Injurious and Utterly Unfit Environment": A Case Study Comparing Dental Evidence of Childhood Stress in Nineteenth Century Working-Class Peoples From British and Colonial New Zealand Contexts.American journal of biological anthropology · 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
- Article
- Dental biorhythm is associated with adolescent weight gain.Communications medicine · 2022Article
- First systematic assessment of dental growth and development in an archaic hominin (genus,Science advances · 2019Article
- The biorhythm of human skeletal growth.Journal of anatomy · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The Havers-Halberg Oscillation (HHO) hypothesis links evidence for the timing of a biorhythm retained in permanent tooth enamel (Retzius periodicity) to adult body mass and life history traits across mammals. Potentially, these links provide a way to access life history of fossil species from teeth. Recently we assessed intra-specific predictions of the HHO on human children. We reported Retzius periodicity (RP) corresponded with enamel thickness, and cusp formation time, when calculated from isolated deciduous teeth. We proposed the biorhythm might not remain constant within an individual. Here, we test our findings. RP is compared between deciduous second and permanent first molars within the maxillae of four human children. Following this, we report the first RPs for deciduous teeth from modern great apes (n = 4), and compare these with new data for permanent teeth (n = 18) from these species, as well as with previously published values. We also explore RP in teeth that retain hypoplastic defects. Results show RP changed within the maxilla of each child, from thinner to thicker enameled molars, and from one side of a hypoplastic defect to the other. When considered alongside correlations between RP and cusp formation time, these observations provide further evidence that RP is associated with enamel growth processes and does not always remain constant within an individual. RP of 5 days for great ape deciduous teeth lay below the lowermost range of those from permanent teeth of modern orangutan and gorilla, and within the lowermost range of RPs from chimpanzee permanent teeth. Our data suggest associations between RP and enamel growth processes of humans might extend to great apes. These findings provide a new framework from which to develop the HHO hypothesis, which can incorporate enamel growth along with other physiological systems. Applications of the HHO to fossil teeth should avoid transferring RP between deciduous and permanent enamel, or including hypoplastic teeth.
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