What would my bones say if I died tomorrow and were unearthed a thousand years from now?

Let's see. It's actually difficult to tell at first glance if this is a male or female skeleton, but a closer look at the pelvis tells us that this is a female who's never had children. Overall the skeleton is heavy, broad-shouldered and with a large ribcage. The bones themselves are faily thick and very dense, indicating that either she was overweight or did heavy work, or both. The femur indicates that she was well into adulthood, but had none of the signs of advancing age, so she could have been anywhere between ages 18-40.

The skull is porportioned to the rest of the body, with Caucasian bone structure and a low brow. The skull shows signs of repeated trauma. One noteable injury is some calcification on the ridge between the eyes and what appears to be an associated deviated septum. It appears that this woman was struck between the eyes with something small and blunt, probably when she was young. The teeth have fillings in a number of moalars, but all are present and with the straightness you generally get with orthodontia. The wear on her teeth narrows her age to sometime between 25 and 35 years old.

The spiine is unremarkable, except for some wear on the inner edge of the second thoracic vertabrae. It's likely that she had some back problems associated with this area; this is common in people who sit in hunched periods for hours at a time. This tells us she likely had a job doing fine work of some sort. No other noteable deformaties of the spine.

There is a small, well healed break in the left humerus; this too appears to be a childhood injury.

Looking closer at the humerus and femur, we see something odd in the marks left behind by the growth plates. The growth in the bones appears to have been normal until probably about age 10 or 12, where the marks are much closer together than would be expected. She appears to have done some catching up in her late teens, but this is probably the reason that the skeleton appears to be so heavy--it stopped growing in her teens, probably due to some sort of metabolic event. It likely wasn't malnourishment, so we can only assume that this woman had a chronic disease that slowed her growth during her adolescence.

The third metatarsal on both hands has a large lump on the distal end. Looking up the wrist, we see signs of chronic inflammation on the outer carpals and on the end of the ulna inside the elbow. This is a sign of a chronic ulnar nerve inflammation, usually associated with tendonitis. There is also a large calcified spot on the fourth finger on the middle phlange of the left hand--a near-certian sign that this woman was left-handed.

The lower spine, pelvis, and legs are unremarkable. The heel bone shows small calcified spots characteristic of plantar fascitis.

Overall, the mystery about this woman is why she stopped growing almost completely in adolescence. Perhaps genotyping will tell us more.

I've been wanting to do that ever since I watched the Walking with Dinosaurs Allosaurus special. I just started thinking about what people could learn from my skeleton, and so I wrote it up. (Please note that my anatomy is shaky these days, so I likely got details wrong. Don't skewer me!)

In other news, the weather here continues to improve. I've bought myself a pedometer and it's now my goal to walk at least 9000 and better yet 10000 steps a day. Today I walked over 12,000 steps, so I think I'm doing pretty well so far. The pedometer feeds into my obsession with numbers and measurable results, so I think I've found a good exercise match.

And along with spring weather comes spring desires.

I think I'm going to go think happy thoughts now. Mmmm. Spring.

(this has been an On Display collaboration piece: write about a part of your body.)

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