Soft tissue constraints on joint mobility in the avian shoulder.

ABSTRACT: Joints and their surrounding soft tissues facilitate and restrict vertebrate skeletal motion. Measures of maximal joint mobility provide insight into articular function and its limits on potential joint motion and thereby behaviour. In extinct vertebrates the reconstruction of joint mobility permits us to decipher shifts in locomotor evolution. Such measurements are generally limited to studies of osteological joint mobility. However, only a subset of osteologically feasible poses are biologically feasible because true joint mobility is limited by soft tissues, such as ligaments, that are seldom preserved in the fossil record. To address this issue, we implemented an in silico model to simulate avian glenohumeral (shoulder) movement and the constraints imposed by six ligaments on its joint

SUBMITTER: Demuth OE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12669841 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature