Deciduous Dental Morphological Diversity in Contemporary Colombian Ethnic Groups

Abstract

Biocultural diversity of contemporary South American populations has not been studied extensively, therefore delineating some of the patterns of phenotypic variation may be useful for understanding their ongoing evolution. Thirty-seven deciduous dental nonmetric traits were scored on 200 dental casts that were obtained from four contemporary Colombian ethnic groups with different ancestry. Inter-group affinities were assessed by means of a principal component
analysis based on trait frequencies. African-American Colombian groups share several dental morphological affinities with other New World African derived populations as well as with Sub-Saharan African dental samples. Colombian Amerindians have a relative affinity with prehistoric Native North American samples, but a clear association with living North American Indians and recent Northeast Asian Sinodont populations was not evident. The biologically admixed group or “Mestizo”
has a more complicated pattern of phenotypic relationships, with an African and an Amerindian but not an evident European component. From an evolutionary point of view, gene flow probably is the most important factor that changed the original gene pool through time. These groups have a complex landscape of biocultural variation reflected by their different microevolutionary histories.