General information Title: Why the long teeth? Morphometric analysis suggests different selective pressures on functional occlusal traits in Plio-Pleistocene African suids Corresponding author: Deming Yang, Department of Geology and Geophysics, The University of Utah, E-mail: deming.yang@utah.edu, ydmag1987@gmail.com Date of data collection: 2018-03 to 2020-05. Geographic location of data collection: Kenya, South Africa, France Keywords: third molar elongation, enamel thickness, enamel complexity, dental wear simulation, African suid evolution Language: English Funding sources: Sigma Xi Grant in Aid of Research, the College of Arts and Sciences of Stony Brook University, the Turkana Basin Institute, the LaScArBx (a research program of the Agence Nationale de la Recherche, ANR-10-LABX-52), the SYNTHESYS grant (DE-TAF-5741), and the Evolutionary Studies Institute of the University of the Witwatersrand Publication date: 2022-03-10 Data and file overview List of content available in Supplementary material (.PDF) 1 Appendix 1 describes additional methods, results and descussion that support the main text with tables, figures, and literature cited. 2 Appendix 2 describes detailed data processing protocol with figures. Date created: 2022-02-19 Date uploaded: 2022-03-10 List of data available in Appendix 3 (.xlsx) (a) results of Interobserver error estimation using Sus scrofa specimen P18 (b) Raw data reported in the main manuscript and supplementary S1 (c) Tooth width of selected specimens for the calculation of relative enamel thickness (d) Raw data measured from occlusal photographs Date created: 2022-03-10 Date uploaded: 2022-03-10 Sharing and access information CC0 1.0 Recommended citation for the data: Yang, Deming et al. (2022), Why the long teeth? Morphometric analysis suggests different selective pressures on functional occlusal traits in Plio-Pleistocene African suids, Dryad, Dataset, https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.tmpg4f510 Methodological information Description of methods for data collection or generation is available in the Supplementary material file (.PDF) Description of methods used for data processing is available in the Supplementary material file (.PDF) Data-specific information Variables: DER = Dentine exposure ratio; EDBI = Enamel Dentine Boundary Index; ET = Enamel Thickness; A = Area; P = perimeter; RET = Relative Enamel Thickness; Units: mm = milimeter; mm2 = milimeter squared Other notes: Name = the person who collected and processed the data