Publication Date:
2004-12-25
Description:
Diving mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, and humans develop dysbaric osteonecrosis from end-artery nitrogen embolism ("the bends") in certain bones. Sixteen sperm whales from calves to large adults showed a size-related development of osteonecrosis in chevron and rib bone articulations, deltoid crests, and nasal bones. Occurrence in animals from the Pacific and Atlantic oceans over 111 years made a pathophysiological diagnosis of dysbarism most likely. Decompression avoidance therefore may constrain diving behavior. This suggests why some deep-diving mammals show periodic shallow-depth activity and why gas emboli are found in animals driven to surface precipitously by acoustic stressors such as mid-frequency sonar systems.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Moore, Michael J -- Early, Greg A -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2004 Dec 24;306(5705):2215.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Biology, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA. mmoore@whoi.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15618509" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Atlantic Ocean
;
Body Size
;
Bone Density
;
Bone Remodeling
;
Bone and Bones/*pathology
;
Decompression Sickness/complications/pathology/*veterinary
;
*Diving
;
Female
;
Male
;
Osteonecrosis/etiology/pathology/*veterinary
;
Pacific Ocean
;
*Whales/anatomy & histology/physiology
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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