Deciduous Dental Morphological Diversity in Contemporary Colombian Ethnic Groups

Abstract

Biocultural diversity of contemporarySouth American populations has not been studiedextensively, therefore delineating some of the patterns ofphenotypic variation may be useful for understandingtheir ongoing evolution. Thirty-seven deciduous dentalnonmetric traits were scored on 200 dental casts thatwere obtained from four contemporary Colombianethnic groups with different ancestry. Inter-group affinitieswere assessed by means of a principal componentanalysis based on trait frequencies. African-AmericanColombian groups share several dental morphologicalaffinities with other New World African derived populationsas well as with Sub-Saharan African dental samples.Colombian Amerindians have a relative affinity withprehistoric Native North American samples, but a clearassociation with living North American Indians andrecent Northeast Asian Sinodont populations was notevident. The biologically admixed group or “Mestizo”has a more complicated pattern of phenotypic relationships,with an African and an Amerindian but not anevident European component. From an evolutionarypoint of view, gene flow probably is the most importantfactor that changed the original gene pool through time.These groups have a complex landscape of bioculturalvariation reflected by their different microevolutionaryhistories.