Diet
In a 1979 preliminary microwear study of Australopithecus fossil teeth, anthropologist Alan Walker theorized that robust australopiths were largely frugivorous. Australopithecus mainly ate fruit, vegetables, and tubers. Much research has focused on a comparison between the South African species Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus. Early analyses of dental microwear in these two species showed that compared to Paranthropus robustus, Australopithecus africanus had fewer microwear features and more scratches as opposed to pits on its molar wear facets.
These observations have been interpreted as evidence that Paranthropus robustus may have fed on hard and brittle foods like some nuts and seeds. More recently new analyses based on three-dimensional renderings of wear facets have confirmed earlier work but have also suggested that Paranthropus robustus ate hard foods primarily as a fallback resource while Australopithecus africanus ate more mechanically tough foods.
In 1992, trace element studies of the strontium/calcium ratios in robust australopith fossils suggested the possibility of animal consumption, as they did in 1994 using stable carbon isotopic analysis.
Read more about this topic: Australopithecus
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