Developmental trajectories, traumatic injuries and decompositional histories of the juvenile human skeleton

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Natural history scientists, namely paleontologists, archaeologists and forensic anthropologists, have been reconstructing life-histories, circumstances of death and burial environments from juvenile human skeletal remains for a long time. Morphological assessment of juvenile skeletal remains in modern environments shows that variation in and plasticity of the skeleton may be explained in terms of ecological and neotaphonomic patterns and processes observed in the present to better understand the past. This research program is a first effort to integrate different experimental and theoretical approaches about the juvenile human skeleton that are united under the umbrella of actuopaleontological studies. ***My long-term objective is to study the interactions between the juvenile human skeeton and its environment, encompassing all ecological processes and responses in life, death and after death. There are two streams: 1) ecological, and 2) taphonomical processes and responses. In the first stream I wish to test the effects of ecological factors on variation in linear and proportional growth of the skeleton, and on variation in the timing of tooth formation. In the second stream, I wish to test the effects of different blunt trauma mechanisms on variation in juvenile cranial fracture patterns, and the differential effects of environmental factors on the sequence and rate of degradation in immature and mature bone. ***I propose to test hypotheses about the effects of ecological factors on variation in skeletal growth and dental development by comparing groups of individuals that differ in the quality of the biocultural environment for growth, using data from collections of known sex and age juvenile skeletons, and CT-scans and dental x-rays from children. I will test the effects of different trauma mechanism on variation in cranial fracture by documenting the age dependent changes associated with different fracture patterns that result from falls and from blows to the head. I propose an outdoors experimental study comparing the rate of microscopic and macroscopic degradation in immature and mature bone to test the effects of the environment on bone decomposition that are dependent on age. ***This research will enhance our knowledge about fundamental human biological processes that contribute to the study of juvenile hominid fossils, the impacts of the biocultural environment on child growth throughout the history of humanity and improve our current techniques used for forensic age estimation in children from the skeleton and dentition. This research will also advance our understanding of the uniqueness of human immature bone, compared to mature bone, and how peri-mortem and post-mortem processes influence the variation in morphology of the skeleton that is due to different blunt force trauma dynamics and decompositional processes.**