Since Campbell (1925) reported dental characteristics in the Australian Aborigines, a considerable number of investigations on dentition of this population have been carried out. In particular, works of the project team of Department of Dental Science, the University of Adelaide, should be borne in mind. This project started in the early 1950's under the direction of M. J. Barrett to make longitudinal studies on dentition of Aborigines known as Wailbri who lived under settlement conditions at Yuendumu, 185 miles northwest of Alice Springs in Central Australia. Since then they have accumulated extensive data including excellent dental casts, part of which is composed of deciduous and permanent dentitions in the same individuals.

Very fortunately, the present author had an opportunity to visit the University of Adelaide to investigate the collection of dental casts in 1969. During a four-month stay in Adelaide, he made researches including dental crown measurements and observations, and took a number of photographs of dental crowns. Although several papers on dentition of Yuendumu Aborigines have been published so far by Barrett and his colleagues, the present author paid special attention to affinities of Aborigines to some other populations on which the data were obtained by himself.

Since the greater part of this investigation had to be aided by computer facilities, the final analyses started after the required computer programs had been developed. This is one of the reasons why the publication of this paper has been delayed.

There are still some other problems which should be discussed in regard to overall dental characteristics represented by Aborigines, and to origin as well as diversification of this population viewed from dental anthropology. However, the data obtained by the present study are not necessarily sufficient to solve such problems so that they remain for the future investigations.