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The Unknown Bone

5/27/2016

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       There is a bone that not many know of, there is a bone that is not attached to other bones, only to muscle, and this bone gives us the ability to speak. You would think the part of our bodies that would give us the ability to speak would be a muscle; such as the tongue. But this bone is what helps control the actions of the tongue, pharynx (cavity behind the nose and mouth which connects them to the esophagus), larynx (the hollow muscular organ forming an air passage to the lungs and holding the vocal cords in humans and other mammals; the voice box), and even the mandible (the jaw). Without this bone we would not have the capability to speak. The name of this unknown bone is the hyoid.
       Not to be confused with the thyroid, which is at the base of the neck, while the hyoid is as the base of the mandible. At birth, we humans have the hyoid slightly higher (and in it being higher, so is the larynx), which is why babies can breath and drink at the same time. Around three months, the larynx drops, and even though this would increase the probability of choking, it also highly increases the ability for speech. But this is not the last time the larynx will “drop;” in human males around puberty it slightly drops one more time, which gives them a deeper voice than human females. “No other animal has a larynx low enough to produce sounds as complex as our ancient ancestors did and as we do today, including our close relatives the chimpanzees, whose hyoid bone sits just a smidge too high to do anything but hoot and grunt.”

       Now just because our closest living cousins do not have a low larynx, that does not mean our evolutionary ancestors and cousins did not. The first of our ancestors that is believed to be able to speak was the Homo heidelbergensis, who is “believed to be the related to both modern humans and Neanderthals.” Yes, that is right, according to fossil records we have of Neanderthals, it is likely they were able to speak. This is still a “theory,” but it is exciting to think how they would have sounded, what they would have talked about.

       However amazing the hyoid presents itself, it also helps us in solving crimes. How? Well, first I must explain what the hyoid Is like. It is shaped like a U (image below), and it is not fully solid during adolescence, but once it is fused (mind you, not all hyoids fuse), it is very hard to break. Which is why in murder cases if the hyoid is broken, the primary cause of death would be strangulation. 
Picture
       So ends another small fun fact for Fun Fact Friday. Again, if you have an itching to get to the bottom of a small fact that has been festering in your mind, or if you have a blog topic you would like me to cover, or if you would just like to express your thoughts on this first Fun Fact Friday, please feel free to comment below.
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Fun Fact Friday – Vitamin A Can Kill You

5/20/2016

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       Or at least an excessive amount. When one takes in that excessive amount it leads to a disease named “hypervitaminosis A.” The earliest case of this actually took place in a female Neanderthal, who is now known as “KNM-ER 1808,” who is also dates to be the earliest found Neanderthal. The way we know she suffered from hypervitaminosis A was all thanks to her bones. This disease caused her bones, mainly the ones of her limbs, to be “with a coat of woven bone that is up to seven millimeters thick in places.” Her bones told paleoanthropologist's that she lived for a few months with this disease, and seeing how this must have been painful to gather food, even to walk, it is theorized she was taken care of. In the time in which she lived, she would have been easy prey for the carnivores of then, and would not have lasted two days had she not had care. This is an exciting revelation because this shows the first example of a social bond; a strong one at that. It goes to show that Neanderthal's were more human than we thought, reason being is unlike pack animals in which when a member is weak they are left behind to the elements, but like humans, and a few animals (elephants for example), we are willing to leave some of the healthy behind to care for the sick, so as to eventually catch up.
       It sounds like this hypervitaminosis is something that was lost to the ages, but that is not the case. The reason KNM-ER 1808 has this disease was simply put, an excess of vitamin A, of which we can suffer from now. The main theory of how she contracted this disease was from eating liver, and the liver is where the excess is stored (“where it is never broken down or detoxified”). The liver of carnivores, like dogs or even killer whales eat other animals, including their livers. The ingestion of the liver is the only theory that works because there are other foods high in vitamin A, carrots for example, but then she would have had to eat about 100 pounds of carrots as opposed to one pound of meat. The modern individuals to whom this happens are mostly polar explorers because all they have to eat are carnivores. A case in 1911 tells of a party of polar explorers whose most of their rations went down an ice crevasse, along with a member of their party and with a teams of dogs. They did the best to make the food they had left last, but they eventually had to resort to eating the dogs they had left. Their favourite part was the liver which was soft as opposed to the “stringy, tough, musky-tasting muscles,” and, as I have said before, dogs are amoung those carnivores in which it is easy to contract hypervitaminosis A from eating their liver. Toxic doses cause the tough “fibrous tissue that encases each bone, to rip free from the bone with each pull of a muscle...In the case of 1808, the blood formed huge clots, which ossified – turned into woven bone – before she died.”
       This is just the first of small facts I have planned which are not long enough to be blog entries. If you have an itching to get to the bottom of a small fact that has been festering in your mind, or if you have a blog topic you would like me to cover, or if you would just like to express your thoughts on this first Fun Fact Friday, please feel free to comment below.

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