Figure - PMC

Skip to main content

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

View full-text article in PMC

. 2018 Jun 13;8:9014. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-27336-x

Search in PMC
Search in PubMed
View in NLM Catalog
Add to search

© The Author(s) 2018

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

PMC Copyright notice

Mineralized shapes of tail vertebrae change significantly during ontogeny. (A) Chicken embryonic day E19 wholemount alcian blue and alizarin red; dorsal view, proximal to the top. Alcian blue stains unmineralized cartilage blue and alizarin red stains mineralized tissue red (appears black in this image). In all panels where present, black arrowheads indicate parapophyses. (B) Chicken E19, sagittal view, ossification centers in the pygostyle region; alcian blue and picrosirius red; distal to the left; white arrows indicate ossification centers. (C) Chicken D4, wholemount alcian blue and alizarin red; dorsal view; distal to the left. (D) Chicken 7–8 week old juvenile, pygostyle transverse section, Masson’s Trichrome; dorsal to the top, ventral to the bottom; black arrow indicates spinal cord channel; asterisks indicate unfused medial arch halves. (E) Higher magnification of left parapophysis from (D). (F) Chicken 7–8 week old juvenile, transverse section of left parapophysis, alcian blue and picrosirius red. Compare the red, more sparsely cellular cartilage in this parapophysis tissue with the blue hyaline cartilage in (B) (same stain), indicating disparate matrix staining likely due to increased collagen in the parapophysis. (G) Chicken 7–8 week juvenile, pygostyle transverse fresh cut section, unstained; white arrowheads indicate transverse process extensions. (H) Same tissue as in (G) von Kossa, which stains mineralized tissue black. (I) Chicken 4+ years old, pygostyle transverse section, alcian blue and picrosirius red. Note that trabecular bone remodeling has extended to the tips of transverse processes and parapophyses. (J) MicroCT scan, juvenile Eurypyga helias (LACM 104451) partial tail with pygostyle, dorsal view. (K) MicroCT scan, adult E. helias (LACM 90009) partial tail with pygostyle. Note the mineralized extensions of parapophyses in the adult relative to the juvenile tail vertebrae. Abbreviations: c - centrum, ID - intervertebral disc; NA - neural arch; OF - ossification front; V - vertebra. LACM is the abbreviation for the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, followed by the specimen number.