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Laminar bone of large-bodied dinosaurs and mammals



From: Ben Creisler
bcreisler@gmail.com


A new advance paper in Acta Palaeontologica Polonica:



Rebecca Hofmann, Koen Stein, and P. Martin Sander (2013)
Structural constraints in laminar bone of large-bodied dinosaurs and mammals?
Acta Palaeontologica Polonica (in press)
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.4202/app.2012.0149
http://app.pan.pl/article/item/app20120149.html


Laminar bone tissue is commonly found in Dinosauria (including birds)
and Mammalia. The tissue emerged convergently several times, and its
frequent recurrence among amniotes has stimulated researchers to study
some of its geometric features. One such feature is lamina thickness
or lamina density (LD, expressed as number of laminae per mm). We
measured LD in a sample of sauropodomorph dinosaur taxa (basal
sauropodomorphs, basal sauropods and Neosauropoda) and compared it
with LD of a selection of mammals. LD is relatively constrained within
the groups; nonetheless mean sauropodomorph LD differs significantly
from mean mammal LD. However, increasing sample size with other
dinosaur groups and more perissodactyls and artiodactyls may alter
this result. Among sauropods, LD does not change drastically with
increasing femur length although a slight tendency to decrease may be
perceived. We conclude that the laminar vascular architecture is most
likely determined by a combination of structural and functional as
well as vascular supply and physiological causes.