Ace T'Ken

I appreciate it! I mod [email protected] if you’d ever care to join us.

We try to disagree in good faith and not attack each other there.

That paper is not really a source, it’s a literature review. That’s not inherently bad, but essentially all it does is pull things in from other (if you check, quite outdated by nearly 60 years, which is a lot, ESPECIALLY for biology) articles and say “… and therefore this other thing may be true.” It’s essentially philosophizing.

The paper neither invalidate nor proves anything, it simply makes a loose connection to a strange claim.

The author is correct that we do have characteristics of herbivores. However that is not something anyone was questioning; that’s literally one of the requirements for being an omnivore. We also have characteristics of carnivores. And even obligate carnivores will often have some characteristics of herbivores due to evolutionary holdovers.

The paper is, essentially, saying nothing of value.

Errrr… are you looking for me to provide you a primary scientific source for how teeth work in animals with differing diets? Most of that is in veterinary texts (which is an amalgam of info), but it’s akin to asking for a scientific evidence for gravity. What you’re asking is too broad to be covered in a single paper and shows a misunderstanding of how scientific studies focus and function. I was simply giving you a primer since you asked, and that blog is good enough for that (and accurate from the portion I read).

I can point you at papers (such as this one on Tooth root morphology as an indicator for dietary specialization in carnivores) which can help explain part of how food selection works in evolution, but I’m not sure what level of information would satisfy you or why you’d even want it?

Here’s one on how tooth wear affects teeth differently based on evolutionary eating habits.

Here’s one on the development and evolution of teeth.

Here’s one on mammalian teeth in specific.

If you’d like more, feel free to use https://scholar.google.com/ to look for more.

Human teeth also have sharp peaks and deeper valleys within them which is the case for the overwhelming majority of omnivorous creatures. Most obligate herbivores have flatter teeth or will regrow them unless they have teeth explicitly for a particular use case.

Source: You can check out scads of scientific resources on herbivores versus omnivore versus carnivore teeth. I assume you know how a search engine works, but here’s a solid article on differences.

Also my sister has been one of the veterinary bigwigs at several zoos through her lifetime and we’ve had multiple discussions on it.