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The amount of bone tissue present in an organism does not remain constant throughout a lifetime. Aquatic mammals generally have more dense bones than their terrestrial counterparts and there is little to no information on aquatic mammal bone development. The Florida manatee is a fully aquatic mammal which represents a good example of dense, amedullary bones. The abundance of prominent bone tissue histological features such as osteocytes, mesenchyme, and trabeculae provide a mechanism to determine how bone tissue of the same species differs due to age. The goal of this study was to evaluate key histological differences between bone samples, from manatees of various ages, in order to approximate the age using characteristics of the bone tissue. Nasal tissue including bone from manatees in the perinatal, calf, juvenile, and adult stages of development was embedded in paraffin, sectioned and stained using trichrome. The number of osteocytes was counted at 40X and 100X total magnifications. Analysis of the osteocyte quantity using a chi square test for goodness of fit shows a significant trend (p |
