Recently, a population of long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) 🐒 started using stone tools to open oysters! 🦪 Unusual but not unique. The unique part is that they acquired this behaviour following the Covid19 lockdown!
The macaques, usually relying on tourists for part of their diet, found themselves in need of a new resource...and a way to exploit it!
This tells us how quick technological advances can emerge in primates!
So here's a random poll that I'd like to throw out there for all the #bioarch #osteoarch folks I know about human teeth:
When I had my tooth pulled today, the dentist told me that it took longer than expected because said M3 had three roots not two. I had forgotten about this until then, but IIRC the same was true of at least one of my other M3s when they were pulled back in the day.
So here's the thing I want to know: the dentist *also* told me having three roots in an M3 is pretty rare. Naturally that got my attention, and so now I'm curious: archaeologically, how rare is it to find an M3 with three roots? Like, is that a thing that actually happens pretty often, or is it very unusual to see one in the archaeological record?
And so I've decided to try to find out the answer to this question in the most UNscientific way possible: a social media poll of personal experiences from #archaeologist folks here on the fediverse!😅
Matthew Collins
Dr. Folke Bernadotte 🇪🇺
Dr Alessio Veneziano 💀🦧
Totally Assyrious