Sirenian pachyostosis revisited
Year: 2026

Pachyostosis, the increase in volume of bones, has been documented in a myriad of tetrapods that secondarily adapted to the aquatic environment. However, this convergent trait has hitherto only been quantified in complete ribs and long bones. Here we present a methodology designed to quantify the degree of pachyostosis in ribs and vertebrae, both for complete and fragmentary skeletal elements. Using surface models, we measured volumes of costal and vertebral regions and standardized them using s