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Updated: Aug 25, 2026
Culturing and Measuring Fetal and Newborn Murine Long Bones
Published on: April 26, 2019
On the scaling of mammalian long bones
Guilherme J M Garcia1, Jafferson K L da Silva
1Departamento de Física, Instituto de Ciências Exatas, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Caixa Postal 702, CEP 30123-970, Belo Horizonte-MG, Brazil.
Abstract:
Although there is much data available on mammalian long-bone allometry, a theory explaining these data is still lacking. We show that bending and axial compression are the relevant loading modes and elucidate why the elastic similarity model failed to explain the experimental data. Our analysis provides scaling relations connecting bone diameter and length to the axial and transverse components of the force, in good agreement with experimental data. The model also accounts for other important features of long-bone allometry.
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