Science!! Fucking magnets, how do they work?

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hodj_sl said:
Nah, that's actually a hyper extended styloid.

It was posted to the Bioanthropology News Group a year or two ago and there was a lot of ooohing and aahhing over it.

But you're right that ligaments and such can calcify, and do in people pretty often. Skeletal remains of women who grind a lot of flour in traditional communities show a shit load of ossification of the muscles and ligaments around the lumbar vertebrae from all the rocking back and forth, for instance. Stress can cause it, basically.

Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva is a genetic disorder that causes torn muscle to be repairs with osseous tissue, eventually locking the individual into a second skeleton.

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hodj

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The little kids with their arms and legs and shit permanently locked into place because they played too rough or whatever and then their muscles were replaced with bone is what always gets me to do that when I think about FOP.

Then there's the time period where no one really knew what the disease was, and they tried to correct it surgically.

Bad idea. Surgical removal of the osseous tissue just results in a big explosion of more osseous tissue as the body attempts to repair the damage from the surgery.

It really stumped the medical community for decades.

When the ACVR1 gene and its role in the disease was discovered, it was entirely the result of families of FOP sufferers from around the globe gathering up enough donations to fund a research program into the disease. The donation drive was led by Jeannie Peeper, who is one of the longest survivors with the disease in the world, who runs the International FOP Association.

The research program took nearly 15 years to complete. So it was a big deal.

Gene Discovery

"Cause" and "Cure" have always been the guiding principles in FOP research. Our goal has been to discover the exact genetic and molecular cause of FOP and use that knowledge to develop effective treatments and eventually a cure.

In April 2006, after 15 years of painstaking research, the FOP research team at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and their international collaborators, pinpointed a single gene mutation -- one letter out of six billion in the human genome -- that causes the runaway bone growth of FOP. This groundbreaking discovery is being used to unlock the mysteries of FOP, as well as the secrets of many common skeletal conditions, such as osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, post-amputation treatment, and specific complications of hip replacements, spinal cord injuries, head injuries and some heart valve disorders.

The FOP gene discovery gives people with FOP great hope for the future. Now that the cause of FOP is known, research efforts can now focus on a treatment and cure. The discovery of the FOP gene provides a highly specific target for future drug development that holds promise for altering not just the symptoms of the disease but the disease itself.
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This article in the Atlantic tells Jeannie Peeper's story

The Girl Who Turned to Bone - The Atlantic
 
Lejina

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hodj_sl said:
I googled fifth wisdom tooth and found at least one person on reddit claiming to have it too, so at least you're not alone!
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I had two extra, for 6 total. The two supernumerary were loged way up next to sinuses and a facial reconstruction surgeon removed them. The military dentists were concerned they'd rip a sinus and the surgeon would have to be flown in to fix it, so the surgeon removed the 6 teeth himself. I was awake the entire time too. Local anesthetics don't do anything so far up your face lemme tell you. Good times.
 
Lejina

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Btw, not to reignite the debate, but I wonder if part of the argument between hodj and Jive is a difference of views on what "modern human" means.

For an anthropologist that means something like 20k years ago to now, aka agriculture based society. For the layman modern means now, meaning there's dentists around to remove extra wisdom teeth.
 
hodj

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Lejina_sl said:
Btw, not to reignite the debate, but I wonder if part of the argument between hodj and Jive is a difference of views on what "modern human" means.

For an anthropologist that means something like 20k years ago to now, aka agriculture based society. For the layman modern means now, meaning there's dentists around to remove extra wisdom teeth.
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Mebbe.

Lejina_sl said:
I had two extra, for 6 total. The two supernumerary were loged way up between sinuses and a facial reconstruction surgeon removed them. The military dentists were concerned they'd rip a sinus and the surgeon would have to be flown in to fix it, so the surgeon removed the 6 teeth himself. I was awake the entire time too. Local anesthetics don't do anything so far up your face lemme tell you. Good times.
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Anthropologists find stuff like this in excavated remains all the time. A lot of people have stuff like this, but since it never causes any serious side effects, they often don't even know.

The person with that hyper extended styloid process, for instance, probably never knew they has such a unique anomaly during their lifetime.
 
Jive Turkey

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Lejina_sl said:
Btw, not to reignite the debate, but I wonder if part of the argument between hodj and Jive is a difference of views on what "modern human" means.

For an anthropologist that means something like 20k years ago to now, aka agriculture based society. For the layman modern means now, meaning there's dentists around to remove extra wisdom teeth.
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Ya, my bad for not making that distinction, though I suspect it still doesn't completely clear things up. And I was probably partially still reacting to the "we don't need them so they just go away" reasoning of the people the other night and projecting that distaste onto hodj. His piggybacking hypothesis is more palatable
 
Sentagur

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Maybe the selective pressure for bigger cranium(and smaller jawbone as result) is/was the driving force behind disappearance of wisdom teeth . Back in the day when we chewed roots and junk there was positive pressure for the wisdom teeth as they were advantageous. Right now its no longer there so slowly they are being bred out so we all can have ginormous melons. No not "those" melons.
 
hodj

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Right, precisely.

The thing about all this is that everything that happens in an organism in terms of genetic evolution and its relation to physiological and anatomical changes is a trade off, and there are many potential pathways to similar results, hence convergent evolution being a thing as well.
 
Jive Turkey

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Wisdom tooth space vacancy for an unrelated adaptation isn't so unrealistic, I concede. As long as you can justify the success of the gene for the new adaptation. Which I'm not going to ask anyone to do
 
Sentagur

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Well there is something about larger craniums that indicate better intelligence and potentially better mates.
Also a chick(or dude, whatever your preference) with a sloping forehead and and massive under-bite is sooooo NOT hot!
 
hodj

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Sentagur_sl said:
Its people with preferences like this that explain why we still have neanderthal DNA floating around. Why couldn't they have just pulled out in time.
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HA!

Neanderthals were pretty awesome though.

They got a bad rap back in the day that sticks around.
 
Burnem Wizfyre

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hodj_sl said:
HA!

Neanderthals were pretty awesome though.

They got a bad rap back in the day that sticks around.
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I like reading about Neanderthals, scary if you think about it. 30,000-60,000 years ago a very human like species went extinct, and it's very possible we were the reason with the aid of the domestication of wolves.
 
Abefroman

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I've got 2% Neanderthal DNA. Where the fuck are mah reparations? Can I at least open a fucking casino?
 
hodj

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Pat Shipman (the anthropologist behind the wolf domestication contributing to the decline of the neanderthal populations) is a regular contributor to the Bioanth news group on facebook.

She is a very intelligent and I highly respect her based on our interactions there.
 
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hodj_sl said:
HA!

Neanderthals were pretty awesome though.

They got a bad rap back in the day that sticks around.
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Funniest thing about the traditional portrayal of Neanderthal Man is that a lot of the time they're shown in illustrations (esp. older ones) with frizzy black hair and very swarthy skin. Think about it though - it took the first European homo sapiens something around ten thousand years or so to go from the African phenotype to pasty skin and for red/blond/etc hair to start showing up, and the Neanderthals were around in northern Europe for, what, five times that long? It's only in the lastdecadethat genetic testing confirmed what logic should have stated from the start - they were pale skinned blonds (or redheads, or what have you).

I wonder if anyone's done any research into whether blond(/red/etc) hair in homo sapiens is just parallel evolution or if that 2-4% Neanderthal DNA is involved?
 
hodj

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Pretty sure red hair in homo sapiens developed in Asia relatively recently, as in, ~20k years ago or so. Don't have a current citation for that, but that's what I recall.

Not sure about blonde hair. Its a single gene mutation and possibly tied into some regulatory gene functions. The same gene responsible for skin color in sticklebacks is responsible for blonde hair in homo sapiens, but I'm uncertain where it is believed to have first developed, how long ago that was, etc.
 
Abefroman

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@Hodj Is there any consensus if we all started out black and then lost that pigment as we migrated to Europe and Asia or White and the skin darkened over time to protect against the sun?
 
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