Secondary Osteons Scale Allometrically In Mammalian Humerus And Femur

Intra-cortical bone remodelling is a cell-driven process that replaces existing bone tissue with new bone tissue in the bone cortex, leaving behind histological features called secondary osteons. While the scaling of bone dimensions on a macroscopic scale is well known, less is known about how the spatial dimensions of secondary osteons vary in relation to the adult body size of the species. We measured the cross-sectional area of individual intact secondary osteons and their central Haversian canals in transverse sections from 40 stylopodial bones of 39 mammalian species. Scaling analysis of our data shows that mean osteonal resorption area (negative allometry, exponent 0.23, R 2 0.54, p 2 0.45, p