Thursday, January 13, 2011

Just a look-see

In lab on Wednesday we were able to take a look at the significant bones of the human body, and compare them to the same bones on monkeys and other apes. For me this was a bit of a review (thankfully!) and it was really nice to be able to take photos of the features that I find pretty interesting.



Here is a good front on shot of a gorilla skull. I wanted to be able to see the diastema, which is the spacing in the teeth created by the canines, which is there to allow the mouth to close properly.

Below are two photos that show the difference in the skull between a gorilla and human. Notice that the human skull lacks the sagittal crest, and that the sagittal crest on the gorilla is not purely a product of the left and right parietal bones meeting, but rather a feature that is present across both the frontal AND parietal bones.






Here I show the glenoid fossa, which is the part of the scapula where the humeral head fits into and rotates around in. Notice how shallow it is and the likelihood of shoulder dislocations. The shallow housing for the humeral head is a likely consequence of brachiation at some point in our ancestral past.



Next I have a comparison between the ankle region of a human and monkey. In the human we are looking at the left lateral and medial malleolus, the talus, and the calcaneous (heel bone.) The photo of the same region (though situated on the right side of the body) on the monkey shows that the calcaneous protrudes out much further than in the human.





Finally we have a human pelvis, and though the picture didn't turn out very well the feature that I was after turned out quite well. I want to draw attention to the sharp angle on the pelvis, that indicates this was a human male. The pelvic opening in a male is much less rounded than in a female due to the fact that a male doesn't need to push a baby head out through the opening. In a female the sacrum also isn't as sharply convex as in a male, also a consequence of child birth.



All in all this lab was a great step back into reminding myself where all of these wonderful bones and features are in the body. It's nice to be thinking about them in an evolutionary standpoint instead of a therapeutic one this time as well.

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