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On the relationship of the myotome to the axial skeleton in vertebrate evolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2016

George V. Lauder Jr.
George V. Lauder Jr.*
Affiliation:
The Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138
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Abstract

The traditional belief that vertebrae must alternate in position with the segmented body musculature (myotomes) to allow bending of the axial skeleton is evaluated in terms of the patterns of development and structure of gnathostome vertebrae. The key functional parameter allowing lateral bending of the axial skeleton is the intersegmental position of both the neural and haemal arches, not the centrum. The intersegmental position of both the centrum and arches in tetrapods is the result of a secondary association of the centrum with the primary intersegmental position of the neural and haemal arches. The pattern of vertebral ontogeny and structure in primitive gnathostomes suggests that a causal link between sclerotomic resegmentation during amniote development and the presence of intersegmental vertebrae in the adult is spurious and corroborates the hypothesis that the process of resegmentation evolved as a method of redistributing large volumes of sclerotome cells during development. Patterns of vertebral construction in lower vertebrates are related to fast-start performance and the use of the body as a hybrid oscillator during locomotion.

Type
Articles
Information
Paleobiology , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , Winter 1980 , pp. 51 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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