The “new bone”: Some anthropological potentials

Abstract

Discovery of the skeletal intermediary organization in 1964 led to recognition of many functions and purposes served by its mechanisms in living skeletons and some of the action principles and agents that control them. Collectively they determine the macroscopic and microscopic anatomy of skeletons during growth and in adult life. Growing understanding of how and why those mechanisms affect skeletal structure now allows many features of their controls in life (growth, mechanical usage, disease, nutrition, age, sex, species) to be inferred from skeletal micro‐ and macromorphology with useful confidence. Such matters deserve recognition and systematic study by anthropologists, as well as by forensic pathologists and paleontologists. Copyright © 1985 Wiley‐Liss, Inc., A Wiley Company