Dental microwear of small mammals as a high resolution paleohabitat proxy: opportunities and challenges

The inter-relationships between hominins and their habitat are some of the key questions in human evolution, and the determination of paleohabitats accurately is the foundation for robust reconstructions. Dental microwear is the study of microscopic submicron wear on dentition and provides a unique opportunity to infer paleodiets and paleohabitats of fossil species. However, the ability to infer paleohabitats from paleodiet is scale sensitive. Thus, dental microwear of small mammals affords us the opportunity to study paleoecology at a finer spatial and temporal scale than microwear analysis of larger mammals. This paper reviews the history of small mammal microwear studies and discusses the relationship between small mammal diet, habitat and dental microwear features and texture. The paper argues that dental microwear on small mammals can provide unique information on paleohabitats not available using dental microwear on larger taxa. Taphonomic biases, the role of dust and grit in the formation of microwear, and variation across tooth and facet in the analysis of dental microwear are discussed. In order to move the field forward and to further clarify the relationship between dental microwear features and diet in small mammals, further studies need to be conducted.