And now for something completely different. Let's talk about diet! Fossil evidence suggest that: Australopithecus species had large check teeth, thick enamel, large jaws. Most of the fossil sites that we find with Australopithecus do not have stone tools.
From isotopes we know that they ate fruits, leaves, and some parts of grasses- -perhaps the roots. They ate tough or hard foods.Paranthropus species continued this trend with larger cheek teeth (ok, huge), extremely massive jaws, and evidence of very large temporalis muscles. Bone digging sticks have been found in South Africa indicating possible termite eating. From isotopes we know that East African species at some parts of grasses, and South African species at fruit, nuts, leaves, and some parts of grasses. For both, they were eating very tough or hard foods.
Early Homo species reserse that trend and have smaller cheek teeth and smaller mandibles. Homo species ate all types of food as they were likely omnivorous. Either at the Homo fossil sites or nearby those fossil sites, stone tools called Oldowan have been recovered. The stone tools are sharp and can still cut things two million years later. Ok, now for the question, why did Homo species' teeth become smaller?
a. Homo species filed their teeth down with the stone tools and the teeth only seem to be smaller.
b. Homo species have small teeth because their brains became larger.
c. Homo species began to have smaller teeth because they used tools to cut up foods that made it easier to chew the food-like meat.
d. None of these answers are correct.
