Research overview: dental microwear texture analysis of fossil cats

This overview surveys dental microwear texture analysis, a method that examines microscopic wear features on tooth surfaces to infer what an animal ate shortly before death. In fossil cats, the technique distinguishes diets dominated by flesh from those involving heavy bone consumption, offering a short-term dietary signal that complements the longer-term record from isotopes. The survey reviews how three-dimensional surface scanning quantifies wear complexity and anisotropy, how results for Smilodon and other La Brea carnivores have informed debates about whether late Pleistocene predators faced food stress, and how microwear sometimes conflicts with other proxies. It discusses the method's sensitivity to the final meals of an individual, its value for testing carcass-utilization and competition hypotheses, and its growing role in reconstructing the feeding behaviour of extinct felids.