Scholars@Duke
Keegan Rayne Selig

Keegan Rayne Selig

Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology
Evolutionary Anthropology

Selected Publications

Dental Topographic Analysis of Living and Fossil Lorisoids: Investigations into Markers of Exudate Feeding in Lorises and Galagos

Journal Article International Journal of Primatology · August 1, 2024 Studies integrating patterns of molar morphology and diet are particularly useful to address questions of evolutionary history and diet in extinct taxa. However, such studies are lacking among lorisoids compared with other primates. Lorisoidea is distincti ... Full text Cite

Dental caries in living and extinct strepsirrhines with insights into diet.

Journal Article Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · June 2024 Dental caries is one of the most common diseases afflicting modern humans and occurs in both living and extinct non-human primates, as well as other mammalian species. Compared to other primates, less is known about the etiology or frequency of caries amon ... Full text Cite

Variation in dental morphology and dietary breadth in primates and their kin

Journal Article Journal of Mammalogy · June 1, 2024 Sympatric animals may consume diets of differing breadths as a strategy to reduce competition. Studying patterns of dietary breadth in extinct taxa is difficult because available data are generally limited to morphology. Dental topographic analysis (DTA) i ... Full text Cite

Hypoconulid loss in cercopithecins: Functional and developmental considerations.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · February 2024 Cercopithecins differ from papionins in lacking a M3 hypoconulid. Although this loss may be related to dietary differences, the functional and developmental ramifications of hypoconulid loss are currently unclear. The following makes use of dent ... Full text Cite

Form, function, and tissue proportions of the mustelid carnassial molar

Journal Article Mammal Research · October 1, 2023 Mustelids are an ecologically diverse group of mammals that span several dietary niches. Compared to other mammalian clades, however, less is known about how the morphology of the dentition reflects these dietary differences. The following examines dental ... Full text Cite

Measuring Molarization: Change Through Time in Premolar Function in An Extinct Stem Primate Lineage

Journal Article Journal of Mammalian Evolution · December 1, 2022 The dentition can be thought of as comprising a series of functional modules, which may include pre-ingestive food preparation, ingestion, sexual signalling, and mastication. Changes in diet may be manifested in shifts in the boundaries between these modul ... Full text Open Access Cite

A new genus of treeshrew and other micromammals from the middle Miocene hominoid locality of Ramnagar, Udhampur District, Jammu and Kashmir, India

Journal Article Journal of Paleontology · November 28, 2022 The fossil record of treeshrews, hedgehogs, and other micromammals from the Lower Siwaliks of India is sparse. Here, we report on a new genus and species of fossil treeshrew, specimens of the hedgehog Galerix, and other micromammals from the middle Miocene ... Full text Cite

Erratum: A new genus of treeshrew and other micromammals from the middle Miocene hominoid locality of Ramnagar, Udhampur District, Jammu and Kashmir, India (Journal of Paleontology (2022) DOI: 10.1017/jpa.2022.41)

Journal Article Journal of Paleontology · November 1, 2022 The published version of this article (Sehgal et al., 2022) contained an error in the caption of Figure 8. The caption for Figure 8.4 should instead be the caption for Figure 8.5, and the caption for Figure 8.5 should be the caption for Figure 8.4. Note th ... Full text Cite

Dietary shifts in a group of early Eocene euarchontans (Microsyopidae) in association with climatic change

Journal Article Palaeontology · September 1, 2021 Microsyopidae is a family of plesiadapiforms known from over 1500 stratigraphically controlled specimens from the southern Bighorn Basin of Wyoming spanning the first three million years of the early Eocene. The early Eocene is characterized by rapid fluct ... Full text Open Access Cite

The largest and earliest known sample of dental caries in an extinct mammal (Mammalia, Euarchonta, Microsyops latidens) and its ecological implications.

Journal Article Scientific reports · September 2021 Dental cavities or caries is a common disease among modern humans, affecting almost every adult. Caries frequency has been used to study dietary change in humans over time, based on an inferred tie between the incidence of caries and a carbohydrate-rich di ... Full text Cite

The effect of high wear diets on the relative pulp volume of the lower molars.

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · April 2021 ObjectivesOne role of dental pulp is in the upkeep and maintenance of dentine. Under wear, odontoblasts in the pulp deposit tertiary dentine to ensure the sensitive internal dental tissues are not exposed and vulnerable to infection. It follows th ... Full text Open Access Cite

Cladogenesis and replacement in the fossil record of Microsyopidae (?Primates) from the southern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming.

Journal Article Biology letters · February 2021 The early Eocene of the southern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming, is notable for its nearly continuous record of mammalian fossils. Microsyopinae (?Primates) is one of several lineages that shows evidence of evolutionary change associated with an interval referred ... Full text Cite

Mammalian molar complexity follows simple, predictable patterns.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · January 2021 Identifying developmental explanations for the evolution of complex structures like mammalian molars is fundamental to studying phenotypic variation. Previous study showed that a "morphogenetic gradient" of molar proportions was explained by a balance betw ... Full text Open Access Cite

Intraspecific variation in molar topography of the early Eocene stem primate Microsyops latidens (Mammalia, ?Primates)

Journal Article Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology · January 1, 2021 Variation in postcanine teeth is relevant to answering questions about both taxonomy and diet. In such contexts, understanding the patterns and the amounts of variation present in a single species is fundamentally important. Here we use dental topographic ... Full text Cite

Using three-dimensional geometric morphometric and dental topographic analyses to infer the systematics and paleoecology of fossil treeshrews (Mammalia, Scandentia)

Journal Article Journal of Paleontology · November 1, 2020 Treeshrews are small, Indomalayan mammals closely related to primates. Previously, three-dimensional geometric morphometric analyses were used to assess patterns of treeshrew lower second molar morphology, which showed that the positions of molar landmarks ... Full text Open Access Cite

Dental Signatures for Exudativory in Living Primates, with Comparisons to Other Gouging Mammals.

Journal Article Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · February 2020 Exudativory, the consumption of gums, is an obligate or a facultative dietary niche for some primates and marsupials. Exudativory has been cited as a dietary niche that may have been present in early primates, so finding a dental signature for exudativory ... Full text Cite

A Novel Method for Assessing Enamel Thickness Distribution in the Anterior Dentition as a Signal for Gouging and Other Extractive Foraging Behaviors in Gummivorous Mammals.

Journal Article Folia primatologica; international journal of primatology · January 2020 Gummivory poses unique challenges to the dentition as gum acquisition may often require that the anterior teeth be adapted to retain a sharp edge and to resist loading because they sometimes must penetrate a highly obdurate substrate during gum extraction ... Full text Open Access Cite

What Role Did Gum-Feeding Play in the Evolution of the Lorises?

Chapter · January 1, 2020 The first primate-like mammals to appear in the fossil record date to the earliest Palaeocene (Clemens, 2004; Fox and Scott, 2011; Silcox and López-Torres, 2017; Van Valen and Sloan, 1965), and the first primates of modern aspect (euprimates) do not appear ... Full text Cite

The Toothcomb of Karanisia clarki: Was this Species an Exudate-feeder?

Chapter · January 1, 2020 Toothcombs have evolved independently in various mammalian lineages, including primates, scandentians and dermopterans, but the presence of a six-toothed toothcomb composed of four lower incisors and two canines (I1, I2 and C1, bilaterally) is a distinctiv ... Full text Cite

The frugivorous insectivores? Functional morphological analysis of molar topography for inferring diet in extant treeshrews (Scandentia)

Journal Article Journal of Mammalogy · December 19, 2019 The ecology, and particularly the diet, of treeshrews (order Scandentia) is poorly understood compared to that of their close relatives, the primates. This stems partially from treeshrews having fast food transit times through the gut, meaning fecal and st ... Full text Open Access Cite

First 3D Dental Topographic Analysis of the Enamel-Dentine Junction in Non-Primate Euarchontans: Contribution of the Enamel-Dentine Junction to Molar Morphology

Journal Article Journal of Mammalian Evolution · December 1, 2019 Molar morphology plays a key role in the systematics and behavioral interpretation of fossil taxa, so understanding the developmental patterns that shape occlusal morphology in modern taxa is of central importance to informing analysis of the fossil record ... Full text Cite

Three-Dimensional Geometric Morphometric Analysis of Treeshrew (Scandentia) Lower Molars: Insight into Dental Variation and Systematics.

Journal Article Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · July 2019 Scandentia (treeshrews) is an order of small-bodied Indomalayan mammals generally agreed to be a member of Euarchonta with Primates and Dermoptera (colugos). However, intraordinal relationships among treeshrews are less well understood. Although recent stu ... Full text Open Access Cite

Dental topographic analysis of paromomyid (Plesiadapiformes, Primates) cheek teeth: more than 15 million years of changing surfaces and shifting ecologies*

Journal Article Historical Biology · February 17, 2018 Plesiadapiforms, appearing near the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, represent the first primate radiation and show a diverse array of tooth morphologies. Dental topographic metrics provide quantitative data on occlusal surface shape. We used three metrics, ... Full text Cite