The Dentition of the Hofmeyr Skull

Abstract

The Hofmeyr skull provides a rare representation of the dentition in sub-Saharan Africa from MIS 3. Aspects of the teeth demonstrate this individual’s close morphological and morphometric ties to South African Holocene and Late Pleistocene dentitions. Dental variation, particularly as it relates to size, is quite broad within the South African context. The Hofmeyr molars reside at the extreme range of morphometric variation observed in Holocene Khoesan dentitions, and find similitude with other large-crowned individuals from the southern and eastern regions of South Africa. A number of non-metrical trait commonalities are observed between the Hofmeyr and South African Khoesan teeth. While only a few of the traits that comprise the “Sub-Saharan African Dental Complex” (SSADC) could be scored for Hofmeyr, a midline diastema, a 3-rooted M2 and a M3 metaconule represent traits also observed in high frequencies among South African Holocene individuals. Additionally, several high frequency traits from the SSADC are observed in the Hofmeyr dentition, but the disparate frequencies among a number of populations that comprise this model in some of the variants (e.g., the Y occlusal pattern on the M2 and the presence of 5 cusps on the M3) make application of the SSADC to the South African dental map problematic.