Bone microanatomy and lifestyle: A descriptive approach

Starting in 2004, our lab has published several studies on the relationship between bone microanatomy, lifestyle (aquatic to terrestrial), and the phylogeny of tetrapods. These studies emphasized quantitative and statistical analyses. Therefore, the raw data used in these studies were never published. This is unfortunate because no model captures all information in biological data. This paper remedies this situation by providing the detailed anatomical drawings used in our previous studies. These constitute the largest set of standardized cross-section images of appendicular long bones (tibiae, radii, and humeri) ever published, at least as far as the number of represented species (over one hundred) is concerned. All major aquatic to terrestrial extant tetrapod clades are represented (lissamphibians, mammals, turtles, squamates, and crocodilians). The comparative figures show that aquatic tetrapods differ most from the others, whereas amphibious taxa differ much less from their terrestrial relatives.