Bones and Cartilage: Developmental and Evolutionary Skeletal Biology - Tapa dura

Bones and Cartilage provides the most in-depth review ever assembled on the topic. It examines the function, development and evolution of bone and cartilage as tissues, organs and skeletal systems. It describes how bone and cartilage is developed in embryos and are maintained in adults, how bone reappears when we break a leg, or even regenerates when a newt grows a new limb, or a lizard a tail.

This book also looks at the molecules and cells that make bones and cartilages and how they differ in various parts of the body and across species. It answers such questions as “Is bone always bone? “Do bones that develop indirectly by replacing other tissues, such as marrow, tendons or ligaments, differ from one another? “Is fish bone the same as human bone? “Can sharks even make bone? and many more.

* Complete coverage of every aspect of bone and cartilage
* Full of interesting and unusual facts
* The only book available that integrates development and evolution of the skeleton
* Treats all levels from molecular to clinical, embryos to evolution
* Written in a lively, accessible style
* Extensively illustrated and referenced
* Integrates analysis of differentiation, growth and patterning
* Covers all the vertebrates as well as invertebrate cartilages
* Identifies the stem cells in embryos and adults that can make skeletal tissues

I have been interested in and studying skeletal tissues since my undergraduate days in Australia in the 1960s. Those early studies on the development of secondary cartilage in embryonic birds, first published in 1967, have come full circle with the discovery of secondary cartilage in dinosaurs12. Bird watching really is flying reptile watching. Skeletal tissue development and evolution, the embryonic origins of skeletal tissues (especially those that arise from neural crest cells), and integrating development and evolution in what is now known as evo-devo have been my primary preoccupations over the past 50+ years.