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The Multiscale Architectures of Fish Bone and Tessellated Cartilage and Their Relation to Function

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Book cover Architectured Materials in Nature and Engineering

Part of the book series: Springer Series in Materials Science ((SSMATERIALS,volume 282))

Abstract

When describing the architecture and ultrastructure of animal skeletons , introductory biology, anatomy and histology textbooks typically focus on the few bone and cartilage types prevalent in humans. In reality, cartilage and bone are far more diverse in the animal kingdom, particularly within fishes, where cartilage and bone types exist that are characterized by features that are anomalous or even pathological in human skeletons. Here, we discuss the curious and complex architectures of fish bone and shark and ray cartilage, highlighting similarities and differences with their mammalian skeletal tissue counterparts. By synthesizing older anatomical literature with recent high-resolution structural and materials characterization work, we frame emerging pictures of form-function relationships in these tissues and of the evolution and true diversity of cartilage and bone.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomaterials, Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, 14424, Potsdam, Germany

    Ronald Seidel, Aravind K. Jayasankar & Mason N. Dean

  2. The Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences, Koret School of Veterinary Medicine, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, PO Box 12, 76100, Rehovot, Israel

    Ron Shahar

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  1. Ronald Seidel
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  2. Aravind K. Jayasankar
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  3. Ron Shahar
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  4. Mason N. Dean
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Correspondence to Mason N. Dean .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia

    Yuri Estrin

  2. SIMAP, Institut Polytechnique de Grenoble, Saint-Martin d’Hères, France

    Yves Bréchet

  3. Department of Chemistry and Physics of Materials, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria

    John Dunlop

  4. Department of Biomaterials, Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Potsdam, Germany

    Peter Fratzl

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Seidel, R., Jayasankar, A.K., Shahar, R., Dean, M.N. (2019). The Multiscale Architectures of Fish Bone and Tessellated Cartilage and Their Relation to Function. In: Estrin, Y., Bréchet, Y., Dunlop, J., Fratzl, P. (eds) Architectured Materials in Nature and Engineering. Springer Series in Materials Science, vol 282. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11942-3_11

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