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Evolutionary physiology

A bone for all seasons

Because mammals have such high metabolic rates, it has long been thought that their growth is invulnerable to seasonal variation. But their bones turn out to contain annual lines, just as those of cold-blooded animals do. See Letter p.358

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Figure 1: Marking time.

Notes

  1. *This article and the paper under discussion3 were published online on 27 June 2012.

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Padian, K. A bone for all seasons. Nature 487, 310–311 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11382

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