ArticleBMC evolutionary biology2014
Osteohistological variation in growth marks and osteocyte lacunar density in a theropod dinosaur (Coelurosauria: Ornithomimidae).
Article in BMC evolutionary biology, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers.
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27 citing papers in PubMed, 63 citations in OpenAlex.
- Growth dynamics, skeletochronology, and histovariability of the theropod dinosaur Berthasaura leopoldinae.Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · 2026Article
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- The living dinosaur: accomplishments and challenges of reconstructing dinosaur physiology.Biology letters · 2025Review
- High-energy synchrotron-radiation-based X-ray micro-tomography enables non-destructive and micro-scale palaeohistological assessment of macro-scale fossil dinosaur bones.Journal of synchrotron radiation · 2023Article
- Rapid growth in Late Cretaceous sea turtles reveals life history strategies similar to extant leatherbacks.PeerJ · 2023Article
- Fossil bone histology reveals ancient origins for rapid juvenile growth in tetrapods.Communications biology · 2022Article
- Osteohistology of a Triassic dinosaur population reveals highly variable growth trajectories typified early dinosaur ontogeny.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Osteohistological description of ostrich and emu long bones, with comments on markers of growth.Journal of anatomy · 2022Article
- Radial porosity profiles: a new bone histological method for comparative developmental analysis of diametric limb bone growth.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- Large-bodied ornithomimosaurs inhabited Appalachia during the Late Cretaceous of North America.PloS one · 2022Article
- Intraskeletal bone growth patterns in the North Island Brown Kiwi (Apteryx mantelli): Growth mark discrepancy and implications for extinct taxa.Journal of anatomy · 2021Article
- Growth variability, dimensional scaling, and the interpretation of osteohistological growth data.Biology letters · 2021Article
- Bone remodeling in the longest living rodent, the naked mole-rat: Interelement variation and the effects of reproduction.Journal of anatomy · 2021Article
- Bone metabolism and evolutionary origin of osteocytes: Novel application of FIB-SEM tomography.Science advances · 2021Article
- Osteohistological analyses reveal diverse strategies of theropod dinosaur body-size evolution.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Growing upScience advances · 2020Article
- Birdlike growth and mixed-age flocks in avimimids (Theropoda, Oviraptorosauria).Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Retention of fish-like odontode overgrowth in Permian tetrapod dentition supports outside-in theory of tooth origins.Biology letters · 2019Article
- Diminutive fleet-footed tyrannosauroid narrows the 70-million-year gap in the North American fossil record.Communications biology · 2019Article
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5 authors at 4 institutions in 3 countries.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundOsteohistological examinations of fossil vertebrates have utilized a number of proxies, such as counts and spacing of lines of arrested growth (LAGs) and osteocyte lacunar densities (OLD), in order to make inferences related to skeletochronology and mass-specific growth rates. However, many of these studies rely on samplings of isolated bones from single individuals. These analyses do not take individual variation into account, and as a result may lead to misleading inferences of the physiology of extinct organisms. This study uses a multi-element, multi-individual sampling of ornithomimid dinosaurs to test the amount of individual variation in the aforementioned osteohistological indicators. Based on these results we also assess the conclusions of previous studies that tested paleohistological hypotheses using isolated elements.
resultsLAG number was found to be consistent within the hind limb bones of each individual, with the exception of the fibula, which preserves one additional LAG. Considerable differences in LAG spacing were found between elements of the sampled individuals, with larger variation found in elements of the foot compared with the femur, fibula, and tibia. Osteocyte lacunar density ranged between 29000 and 42000 osteocyte lacunae per mm(3), and was found to vary more between hind limb bones of an individual and within bones, than between the average values of individuals.
conclusionsThe variation between hind limb elements in LAG number and LAG spacing suggests that direct comparisons of these elements may be misleading, and that LAG spacing is not a reliable proxy for mass-specific growth rates of an individual. Sampling of multiple bones should be performed as an internal check of model-based LAG retro-calculation and growth equations. The observation that osteocyte lacunar density varies more between individual bone elements than between average individual values suggests that the choice of sampled element can greatly influence the result, and care should be taken to not bias interpretations of the physiology of fossil tetrapods.
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