ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2015
Recent origin of low trabecular bone density in modern humans.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 39 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
39 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 173 citations in OpenAlex.
- The utility of dried blood spot measurement of bone turnover markers in biological anthropology.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2022Pooled it
- Sitting foot: posture dependent changes of volume, edema and perfusion of the foot. A prospective interventional study with 27 volunteers.BMC musculoskeletal disorders · 2024Trial
- The impact of footwear on human talar trabecular architecture.Journal of anatomy · 2026Article
- Variation in trabecular bone microarchitecture across rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) load-bearing joints.Journal of anatomy · 2026Article
- Growing together: Developmental integration and modularity in the human talus-calcaneus complex.Journal of anatomy · 2026Article
- Rib Cross-Sectional Mineralized Area in Early Pleistocene Hominins: Insights From the Homo antecessor and H. erectus s. l. Fossil Record.American journal of biological anthropology · 2026Article
- Too Many Bones to Pick - from Overproduction to Refinement: Evidence for Trabecular Pruning in Early Postnatal Development as a Distinct Phase of Skeletal Functional Adaptation.Annals of biomedical engineering · 2026Review
- Bone health: Age-related changes in diaphyseal structural properties among European Holocene humans during the last 9000 years.Science advances · 2025Article
- Locomotor signals in the trabecular structure of the hominoid clavicle.Journal of anatomy · 2025Article
- Trabecular Architecture of the Proximal Tibia in Extant Hominids.American journal of biological anthropology · 2025Article
- Wild bonobos experience unusually low bone resorption during early lactation relative to humans and other mammals.Evolutionary human sciences · 2025Article
- Contemporary small-scale subsistence populations offer unique insights into human musculoskeletal health and aging.Science advances · 2024Review
- Evolutionary and functional analyses of LRP5 in archaic and extant modern humans.Human genomics · 2024Article
- Identification of functionally related adaptations in the trabecular network of the proximal femur and tibia of a bipedally trained Japanese macaque.Anthropological science : journal of the Anthropological Society of Nippon = Jinruigaku zasshi · 2024Article
- Leveraging mice with diverse microbial exposures for advances in osteoimmunology.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2023Article
- Inferring lumbar lordosis in Neandertals and other hominins.PNAS nexus · 2022Article
- Effects of reduced mobility on trabecular bone density in captive big cats.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- Cortical and trabecular bone structure of the hominoid capitate.Journal of anatomy · 2021Article
- Differing effects of size and lifestyle on bone structure in mammals.BMC biology · 2021Article
- Skeletal ageing in Virunga mountain gorillas.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 5 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Humans are unique, compared with our closest living relatives (chimpanzees) and early fossil hominins, in having an enlarged body size and lower limb joint surfaces in combination with a relatively gracile skeleton (i.e., lower bone mass for our body size). Some analyses have observed that in at least a few anatomical regions modern humans today appear to have relatively low trabecular density, but little is known about how that density varies throughout the human skeleton and across species or how and when the present trabecular patterns emerged over the course of human evolution. Here, we test the hypotheses that (i) recent modern humans have low trabecular density throughout the upper and lower limbs compared with other primate taxa and (ii) the reduction in trabecular density first occurred in early Homo erectus, consistent with the shift toward a modern human locomotor anatomy, or more recently in concert with diaphyseal gracilization in Holocene humans. We used peripheral quantitative CT and microtomography to measure trabecular bone of limb epiphyses (long bone articular ends) in modern humans and chimpanzees and in fossil hominins attributed to Australopithecus africanus, Paranthropus robustus/early Homo from Swartkrans, Homo neanderthalensis, and early Homo sapiens. Results show that only recent modern humans have low trabecular density throughout the limb joints. Extinct hominins, including pre-Holocene Homo sapiens, retain the high levels seen in nonhuman primates. Thus, the low trabecular density of the recent modern human skeleton evolved late in our evolutionary history, potentially resulting from increased sedentism and reliance on technological and cultural innovations.
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