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Retention of the flight-adapted avian finger-joint complex in the Ostrich helps identify when wings began evolving in dinosaurs
- Source :
- Ostrich. 89:173-186
- Publication Year :
- 2018
- Publisher :
- National Inquiry Services Center (NISC), 2018.
-
Abstract
- The functional anatomies of avian finger joints have never been compared with those of the basal avian Archaeopteryx lithographica or maniraptoran theropod dinosaurs. These startling oversights are due to unfamiliarity of the joints outside of highly specialised studies of bird-wing biomechanics. Here fleshed to skeletonised repeated-measures analyses of finger-joint ranges of motion (ROMs) in a basal palaeognath, the Ostrich Struthio camelus, were utilised as a model to begin filling in these knowledge gaps. Results verified that all of the flight-adapted, avian-specific finger joints are retained in the flightless, yet large and well-differentiated fingers of the Ostrich. Moreover, Ostrich finger joints still possess flight-restricted ROMs within the semi-pronated plane of the manus. The osteological markers of these highly conserved flight-adapted characters in Ostrich show that prior descriptions have unknowingly demonstrated that the main avian finger-joint complex began evolving at the base of Penna...
- Subjects :
- musculoskeletal diseases
0106 biological sciences
0301 basic medicine
Origin of avian flight
animal structures
biology
Osteology
Manus
biology.organism_classification
010603 evolutionary biology
01 natural sciences
body regions
03 medical and health sciences
030104 developmental biology
Evolutionary biology
Functional morphology
Finger joint
Archaeopteryx
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Struthio
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 1727947X and 00306525
- Volume :
- 89
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Ostrich
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........37826581f2fb1e4faedfe7fce94332c3