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Primate bone histomorphology and its relationship to biomechanical forces
Abstract
Observations of nonhuman primate long bone microanatomy were undertaken with the explicit goal of recording intra- and interspecific variation in the percentage of osteonal bone. One-hundred and eight specimens with age, sex, body size, and positional behavior data representing 7 species (Galago senegalensis, Otolemur crassicaudatus, Macaca fascicularis, Macaca mulatta, Macaca arctoides, Erythrocebus patas, and Cercopithecus aethiops) were examined. Humeral and femoral shafts were examined histologically at the proximal, midshaft, and distal cross sections. Furthermore, the humeral and femoral midshaft sections were histologically examined at the anterior, posterior, medial, and lateral quadrants. Each cross section and quadrant were read specifically for percentages of osteonal bone. Data on cortical bone area and cortical thickness were also recorded for each section. Descriptive statistics, analysis of variance, and Model II regression (maximum likelihood estimation) were used to test for intra- and interspecific variation in osteonal bone for this population of primates. In general, several points concerning primate skeletal microanatomy have been revealed: (1) humeral and femoral microanatomy do not mirror each other in osteonal pattern, suggesting that different factors affect the bone microstructure of these limb bones, (2) primate species with different positional behavior express different distributions of osteonal bone and these differences reflect body size and mechanical usage, (3) after sexual maturation age does not affect intraspecific variations in the percentage of osteonal bone, (4) osteon area scales positively allometrically on body size (cortical area) suggesting that the rate of osteon area increases faster than the rate of increase in body size among primate species. Other conclusions have been drawn from this study, the most important point of which is that mechanical loading plays a large role in stimulating secondary osteon formation and that osteonal bone distribution reflects positional behavior and body size. This has profound implications for how future primate histological research can be conducted. Specific regions of nonhuman primate long bone appear to be particularly responsive to mechanical loading (i.e. the femoral midshaft posterior quadrant). These regions of bone therefore, may not be suited for aging techniques or for metabolic disorder analyses that are often applied in human research. The results of this study also have implications for the application of histological analysis to extinct primate specimens. Given the patterns of osteonal bone exhibited by extant primate species, it should be possible to determine positional behavior of extinct primate species from long bone microanatomy. This information will give primatologists one more important tool to be used in examining skeletal form as it relates to function in fossil primate species.
Subject Area
Physical anthropology|Morphology|Biophysics
Recommended Citation
Paine, Robert R, "Primate bone histomorphology and its relationship to biomechanical forces" (1994). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9420672.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9420672