Mulatta LM, LUT, Polarized (provided separately)

Thigh-bone of a growing 2-year old rhesus macaque monkey (Macaca mulatta).Rhesus macaques live in a wide range of habitats, from near-desert conditions to deciduous forests from Afghanistan and India to South China and Thailand.This individual lived in a captive free-ranging colony in South Carolina,living in a controlled temperate environment.

Top: A 100-micron thick section of the thighbone imaged in circularly polarized light to reveal changes in the orientation of the collagen (protein) component of bone during growth.Differences in the orientations of collagen fibers are reflected in different shades of gray.

Middle: The same field-of-view was imaged in ordinary transmitted light for theidentification of different types of bone tissues deposited at different times during growth, as well as so called growth arrest lines representing periods of temporary suspensions in growth.

Bottom: As the human eye and brain can more readily discriminate color (versus gray-scale) information, the polarized light image (Left) was converted to a pseudo-colorized image.This image facilitates visual inspection of changes in collagen fiber orientation during growth.

The microscopic organization of bone tissues provides information about the rate at which those tissues were deposited, as well as the forces the bones were subjected to during movement, at different times during development.The formation of a growth arrest line situated mid-way through the cortex and running circumferentially around the bone, may reflect seasonal variation in growth rate.

Original width 8.2 mm