T02_09

Dating the “C” in Crown: Developing a method to extract protein in tooth enamel for radiocarbon dating.

Raymond C¹,  Samper Carro S¹, Muhammad R², Wood R^1,3

¹Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, ²University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, ³University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

The rapid degradation of protein in bone in tropical environments represents a key barrier to the development of high quality radiocarbon chronologies for many archaeological and palaeontological sites across vast swathes of the world. Tooth enamel presents an alternative source of protein that could potentially be radiocarbon dated if an appropriate method to extract and purify endogenous peptides is developed. Although protein plays an important role in the formation of tooth enamel, most is removed during this process, and protein comprises only around 1wt% of fully mineralised enamel. However, enamel is far more resistant to diagenetic processes than bone due to its large apatite crystal size and low porosity, and protein is known to survive in enamel for 2 million years in tropical regions (Welker et al. 2019). Successful extraction and radiocarbon dating of protein from tooth enamel presents an exciting alternative for dating non-collagenous skeletal remains.

At present, there is very little published research exploring the possibility of radiocarbon dating tooth enamel proteins. The aim of this project is to develop a method to extract and purify the protein found between the crystallites in enamel. Proteomic analysis of these proteins will be conducted to observe whether protein survivorship changes over time and help understand the impact of sample preparation methods.

Welker et al. Nature 576, 262–265 (2019)