Abstract A herbivore's diet can affect its teeth by causing different types of wear. Browsers typically have sharper, higher cusps, while grazers show lower, blunter cusps, presumably due to the more abrasive nature of their diet. On the macroscopic scale, this allows the reconstruction of herbivore diets based on the shape of the tooth's profile, using the mesowear method. However, the timeframe involved in constituting a stable dietary signal represented by mesowear has not been precisely defined. To obtain a more precise delimitation of this timeframe, sheep (Ovis aries, n = 39) were fed pelleted diets containing external abrasives of different sizes (⌀ 4 μm, ⌀ 50 μm, and ⌀ 130 μm), and concentrations (4%, or 8%) for 17 months. Mesowear was scored on the skulls at the end of the experiment, as well as on computer-tomographic scans and on resin casts of the teeth taken at different timepoints along the experiment. These datasets were compared, and changes in score were calculated using the CT and cast data from the beginning and end of the experiment. Overall, even though a visual trend appeared of more wear on higher abrasion diets, it was of an extremely small magnitude, and the dietary effect on the mesowear scores or the change of the mesowear scores in these animals was never significant. This leads us to conclude that, at least in small ruminants, mesowear is more of a general signal than a seasonal one, and needs to be considered as such for tooth wear-based palaeodietary reconstructions. Experiments with natural forages are required to corroborate this conclusion.

中文翻译：

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在长期喂养实验中，Mesowear 代表了绵羊（Ovis aries）的终生信号

摘要 食草动物的饮食会通过引起不同类型的磨损来影响其牙齿。食肉动物通常有更尖、更高的牙尖，而食草动物的牙尖更低、更钝，大概是因为它们的饮食更具磨蚀性。在宏观尺度上，这允许使用 mesowear 方法根据牙齿轮廓的形状重建食草动物的饮食。然而，尚未精确定义以中等磨损为代表的稳定饮食信号所涉及的时间范围。为了更精确地划分这个时间范围，绵羊（Ovis aries，n = 39）被喂食含有不同尺寸（⌀ 4 μm、⌀ 50 μm 和⌀ 130 μm）和浓度（4%，或 8%) 17 个月。Mesowear 在实验结束时在头骨上进行了评分，以及计算机断层扫描和在实验中不同时间点拍摄的牙齿树脂模型。比较这些数据集，并使用 CT 和实验开始和结束时的铸件数据计算得分的变化。总体而言，即使在较高磨损饮食中出现更多磨损的视觉趋势，但幅度非常小，并且饮食对这些动物的中磨损分数或中磨损分数变化的影响从未显着。这使我们得出结论，至少在小型反刍动物中，中磨损更像是一种普遍信号，而不是季节性信号，并且需要将其视为基于牙齿磨损的古饮食重建。需要用天然草料进行实验来证实这一结论。