Cortical bone distribution of the proximal phalanges in great apes: implications for reconstructing manual behaviours.

ABSTRACT: Primate fingers are typically in direct contact with the environment during both locomotion and manipulation, and aspects of external phalangeal morphology are known to reflect differences in hand use. Since bone is a living tissue that can adapt in response to loading through life, the internal bone architecture of the manual phalanges should also reflect differences in manual behaviours. Here, we use the R package Morphomap to analyse high-resolution microCT scans of hominid proximal phalanges of digits 2-5 to determine whether cortical bone structure reflects variation in manual behaviours between bipedal (Homo), knuckle-walking (Gorilla, Pan) and suspensory (Pongo) taxa. We test the hypothesis that relative cortical bone distribution patterns and cross-sectional geometric properties wi

SUBMITTER: Syeda SM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10557399 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature