Lab+9+Comparative+Vertebrate+Anatomy

Chicken wing with skin still on. First incision, allowing me to view the muscle under the skin.

Reverse side of chicken wing. Here I begin to cut the chicken's skin off.

After skinning the chicken wing I pull the wing to see the muscles and tendons stretch.

Here I flip the chicken wing over where my thumb is in the picture, I push and am able to see the tendons and muscles in action.

I accidentally confused the placement of the radius and ulna. Please swap their placement.

The humerus of the bird is similar to that of a human, but is shorter than that of the human arm. The humerus of a human is longer than that of the radius and ulna, but in birds, the radius and ulna are longer than that of the humerus. The phalanges in the human and bird, are slightly similar in that they are both small bones. The bird's arm looks similar to the human arm, except it is almost as if the human humerus is broken at a 120 degree angle. The carpals are slightly similar in that the radius, ulna, and metacarpals all meet at the carpal in almost the same manner. The carpal of the bird's wing, fits into the ulna, similar as does the carpal of a human to it's radius and ulna.

The human body has 56 phalanges. Source: []

There are fourteen phalanges per hand overall equals 28 phalanges in the hands alone. Source: []

Each finger has three bones per phalange except the thumb only has two bones for it's phalange. Source: []

There are ten metacarpals in the hands, and seeing as there are metacarpals in the feet as well I assume there are ten as well in the feet. Source: []

Exercise 3

1. The bird bone appears very hollow, and almost as though there are pockets of air in the bone. The bird bone almost has the appearance of sandstone in that it is lightweight, and not compact.

2. This is probably due to the fact that birds have to fly, and cannot have the same bone density as animals that cannot fly otherwise they would not even be able to become airborne in that their bones would weigh too much.

3. a) Bones change over the duration of the animal or human's life. If there is not enough access to nutrients or the weather is too cold for the creature, it stunts the bone. Some areas of the bone are more flexible than others.

b) In animals, there is an S shaped curve in the bone which shows the age of the animal. When the bone does the most growing is where the age of the animal can be decipherer. Another way to tell the age of an animal is to count it's LAGS. By counting the LAGS, one is able to find the approximate age of the creatures.

c) Normally the animal stops growing around the time of sexual maturation.

d) Mixing the two bone methodologies 1st the S curve method, and 2nd the LAG method, it is possible to find the actual age of the dinosaur. So two growth methods are the S curve method, and the LAG method. Source: []