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

自然史科学家，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农学模式和过程来解释，以更好地了解过去。这项研究计划是第一次努力整合不同的关于青少年人类骨骼的实验和理论方法，这些方法统一在精算古生物学研究的保护伞下。 我的长期目标是研究幼年人类烤架与其环境之间的相互作用，包括生、死和死后的所有生态过程和反应。有两个流派：1)生态的，2)农艺的过程和反应。在第一个实验中，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。在第二个方面，我希望测试不同的钝性创伤机制对青少年颅骨骨折类型变化的影响，以及环境因素对未成熟和成熟骨的降解顺序和速度的不同影响。 我建议通过比较在生长的生物文化环境质量上不同的个体群体，使用已知性别和年龄的青少年骨骼收集的数据，以及来自儿童的CT扫描和牙齿X光，来检验关于生态因素对骨骼生长和牙齿发育差异的影响的假设。我将通过记录与跌倒和头部撞击导致的不同骨折模式相关的年龄相关变化，来测试不同创伤机制对颅骨骨折变异的影响。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，这些影响取决于年龄。 这项研究将加强我们对有助于研究幼年原始人化石的基本人类生物学过程的了解，以及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从骨骼和牙列估计儿童年龄的技术。这项研究还将促进我们理解人类未成熟骨与成熟骨相比的独特性，以及由于不同的钝力创伤动力学和分解过程，死前和死后过程如何影响骨骼形态的变化。

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.