ISSN:
0362-2525
Keywords:
Life and Medical Sciences
;
Cell & Developmental Biology
Source:
Wiley InterScience Backfile Collection 1832-2000
Topics:
Biology
,
Medicine
Notes:
The study of fractal dimensionality for complex sutures in deer skulls and ammonites reveals their extremely long and elaborate lengths in relation to the defined areas they bound. These sutures often show various scales of self-similarity (where the parent pattern is elaborated in miniature, again and again), and empirical fractal dimensions calculated lie between one and two. In the scaling elaborations of Cervid sutures, some elaborations seem isolated from the continuous suture. Small “islands” are seen in similar theoretical fractal curves as well. The evolutionary and developmental specialization of intricate sutures improves the bonds; such fitness is essential owing to extraordinary stresses. Autocorrelation (where nearby sides or elaborations tend to resemble a basic pattern and, therefore, resemble one another) of the elaborations of the sutures serves to lengthen the boundaries and theoretically enhances the development of self-similar patterns. When autocorrelation and self-similarity in the sutures are favored by an evolutionary process plastic enough to elaborate intricate form, ensuring fitness, and natural selection does not directly limit the lengths while concomitantly defining the bounded areas, then the intricacy is manifest as fractal phenomena, and practically described as such.
Additional Material:
6 Ill.
Type of Medium:
Electronic Resource
URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jmor.1051850303
