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

自然历史学家，即古生物学家、考古学家和法医人类学家，长期以来一直在从青少年人类骨骼遗骸中重建生活史、死亡环境和埋葬环境。对现代环境中幼年骨骼遗骸的形态学评估表明，骨骼的变化和可塑性可以用现在观察到的生态和新学模式和过程来解释，以更好地理解过去。这个研究项目是第一次将不同的实验和理论方法整合在一起，这些方法是在actuopalontology研究的保护伞下统一的。我的长期目标是研究青少年骨骼与其环境之间的相互作用，包括生命、死亡和死后的所有生态过程和反应。有两个流：1)生态，和2)地理过程和响应。在第一个流程中，我希望测试生态因素对骨骼线性和比例生长变化的影响，以及对牙齿形成时间变化的影响。在第二个流中，我希望测试不同钝性创伤机制对青少年颅骨骨折模式变异的影响，以及环境因素对未成熟和成熟骨降解的顺序和速度的差异影响。我建议通过比较生长的生物文化环境质量不同的个体群体，使用已知性别和年龄的青少年骨骼收集的数据，以及儿童的ct扫描和牙科x射线，来检验关于生态因素对骨骼生长和牙齿发育变异的影响的假设。我将测试不同创伤机制对颅骨骨折变异的影响，通过记录因跌倒和头部撞击导致的不同骨折模式相关的年龄依赖性变化。我建议进行一项户外实验研究，比较未成熟和成熟骨骼的微观和宏观降解率，以测试环境对骨骼分解的影响，这取决于年龄。这项研究将提高我们对人类基本生物过程的认识，有助于研究幼年人科化石，整个人类历史上生物文化环境对儿童生长的影响，并改进我们目前用于儿童骨骼和牙齿法医年龄估计的技术。这项研究还将促进我们对人类未成熟骨与成熟骨的独特性的理解，以及死前和死后过程如何影响由于不同钝力创伤动力学和分解过程而导致的骨骼形态变化。

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.