With funding from the National Science Foundation, Peter Ungar is revealing more details about the lives of human ancestors, and he’s doing it through dentistry. The University of Arkansas anthropologist uses high tech dental scans to find out more about the diets of hominids, a technique that sometimes leads to new and very different conclusions. While anthropologists traditionally determine the diets of our ancestors by examining the size and shape of teeth and jaws, Ungar's powerful microscopes paint a more detailed picture by looking at wear patterns on teeth.
