Melandri Vlok, who conducted the dental wear analysis, is a specialist in bioarchaeology and ancient human remains.

Her expertise in dental pathology — the patterns of wear, disease, and damage that ancient teeth display — was essential for recognizing and documenting the unusual wear pattern in the Sulawesi specimens.

Roger Papke, who led the pharmacological experiments, is based in the United States (University of Florida) and specializes in the pharmacology of nicotinic and muscarinic acetylcholine receptors.

His expertise is in molecular pharmacology — the precise interactions between compounds and receptor proteins — and his involvement brought a level of pharmacological rigor to the study that purely archaeological teams could not have provided.

Carney Matheson, who conducted the chemical analysis, is a specialist in archaeochemistry with experience analyzing ancient organic compounds in archaeological specimens.