Effects of climate on dental mesowear of extant koalas and two broadly distributed kangaroos throughout their geographic range.

Dental mesowear analysis can classify the diets of extant herbivores into general categories such as grazers, mixed-feeders, and browsers by using the gross wear patterns found on individual teeth. This wear presumably results from both abrasion (food-on-tooth wear) and attrition (tooth-on-tooth wear) of individual teeth. Mesowear analyses on extinct ungulates have helped generate hypotheses regarding the dietary ecology of mammals across space and time, and recent developments have expanded the use of dental mesowear analysis to herbivorous marsupial taxa including kangaroos, wombats, possums, koalas, and relatives.