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Medullary bone in an Early Cretaceous enantiornithine bird and discussion regarding its identification in fossils
Medullary bone is an ephemeral type of bone tissue, today found only in sexually mature female birds, that provides a calcium reservoir for eggshell formation. The presence of medullary bone-like tissues in extant birds, pterosaurs, and dinosaurs distantly related to birds shows that caution must be...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6281594/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30518763 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07621-z |
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author | O’Connor, Jingmai Erickson, Gregory M. Norell, Mark Bailleul, Alida M. Hu, Han Zhou, Zhonghe |
author_facet | O’Connor, Jingmai Erickson, Gregory M. Norell, Mark Bailleul, Alida M. Hu, Han Zhou, Zhonghe |
author_sort | O’Connor, Jingmai |
collection | PubMed |
description | Medullary bone is an ephemeral type of bone tissue, today found only in sexually mature female birds, that provides a calcium reservoir for eggshell formation. The presence of medullary bone-like tissues in extant birds, pterosaurs, and dinosaurs distantly related to birds shows that caution must be exercised before concluding that fossils bear medullary bone. Here we describe a new specimen of pengornithid enantiornithine from the Lower Cretaceous Jiufotang Formation. Consisting of an isolated left hindlimb, the three-dimensional preservation contrasts with the crushed preservation characteristic of most Jehol specimens. Histological examinations suggest this resulted from the presence of a thick layer of highly vascular bone spanning the medullary cavities of the femur and tibiotarsus, consistent with expectations for medullary bone in extant birds. Micro-computed tomographic scans reveal small amounts of the same tissue extending into the pedal phalanges. We consider the tissue to be homologous to the medullary bone of Neornithines. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6281594 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-62815942018-12-07 Medullary bone in an Early Cretaceous enantiornithine bird and discussion regarding its identification in fossils O’Connor, Jingmai Erickson, Gregory M. Norell, Mark Bailleul, Alida M. Hu, Han Zhou, Zhonghe Nat Commun Article Medullary bone is an ephemeral type of bone tissue, today found only in sexually mature female birds, that provides a calcium reservoir for eggshell formation. The presence of medullary bone-like tissues in extant birds, pterosaurs, and dinosaurs distantly related to birds shows that caution must be exercised before concluding that fossils bear medullary bone. Here we describe a new specimen of pengornithid enantiornithine from the Lower Cretaceous Jiufotang Formation. Consisting of an isolated left hindlimb, the three-dimensional preservation contrasts with the crushed preservation characteristic of most Jehol specimens. Histological examinations suggest this resulted from the presence of a thick layer of highly vascular bone spanning the medullary cavities of the femur and tibiotarsus, consistent with expectations for medullary bone in extant birds. Micro-computed tomographic scans reveal small amounts of the same tissue extending into the pedal phalanges. We consider the tissue to be homologous to the medullary bone of Neornithines. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-12-05 /pmc/articles/PMC6281594/ /pubmed/30518763 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07621-z Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article O’Connor, Jingmai Erickson, Gregory M. Norell, Mark Bailleul, Alida M. Hu, Han Zhou, Zhonghe Medullary bone in an Early Cretaceous enantiornithine bird and discussion regarding its identification in fossils |
title | Medullary bone in an Early Cretaceous enantiornithine bird and discussion regarding its identification in fossils |
title_full | Medullary bone in an Early Cretaceous enantiornithine bird and discussion regarding its identification in fossils |
title_fullStr | Medullary bone in an Early Cretaceous enantiornithine bird and discussion regarding its identification in fossils |
title_full_unstemmed | Medullary bone in an Early Cretaceous enantiornithine bird and discussion regarding its identification in fossils |
title_short | Medullary bone in an Early Cretaceous enantiornithine bird and discussion regarding its identification in fossils |
title_sort | medullary bone in an early cretaceous enantiornithine bird and discussion regarding its identification in fossils |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6281594/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30518763 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07621-z |
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