Original figure description: This photo shows a boy looking at a museum exhibit that contains two fossilized crocodile skeletons embedded within a large boulder. The skull, spine and forelimbs of one of the crocodiles are visible.
Bone is a living tissue. Unlike the bones of a fossil made inert by a process of mineralization, a child’s bones will continue to grow and develop while contributing to the support and function of other body systems. (credit: James Emery)
Bones make good fossils. While the soft tissue of a once living organism will decay and fall away over time, bone tissue will, under the right conditions, undergo a process of mineralization, effectively turning the bone to stone. A well-preserved fossil skeleton can give us a good sense of the size and shape of an organism, just as your skeleton helps to define your size and shape. Unlike a fossil skeleton, however, your skeleton is a structure of living tissue that grows, repairs, and renews itself. The bones within it are dynamic and complex organs that serve a number of important functions, including some necessary to maintain homeostasis.
Attribution. Anatomy and Physiology 2e, OpenStax, Rice University, and the original contributing authors credited in the preface. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. CC BY 4.0. Original book at OpenStax ↗. EvidenceHelix text edition adapted from the pinned OpenStax source: CNXML converted to HTML; original prose, learning objectives, tables, exercises, glossary and captions retained. Images are not reproduced; external figure links and descriptions replace them. This is not the original full illustrated edition. No new scientific content was added. Source edition content may differ from current OpenStax revisions.