News Finding: "That's huge, because if you think about the genes that control the growth of all of the different bones in our body, that suggests they have to be regulated in very complex ways."
Paper Finding: In stark contrast to its low hindlimb:forelimb ratio compared to the most derived bipedal jerboa taxa (Figure 5A ), the long-eared jerboa, Euchoreutes naso, falls within the 95% confidence interval of the regression for metatarsus:femur ( Figure 5B ).
News Context: "We found that evolution controls individual bone size," said Cooper. "That's huge, because if you think about the genes that control the growth of all of the different bones in our body, that suggests they have to be regulated in very complex ways." Finding those genetic regulatory factors, which Cooper hopes to pursue in a future research effort, could help medical researchers develop ways to control growth asymmetries in human limb development.
Paper Context: A Bayesian phylogenetic outlier test demonstrates that 94% of the predictive distribution for the metatarsal:femur ratio of obligate bipeds lies above the measured ratios of these two species. In stark contrast to its low hindlimb:forelimb ratio compared to the most derived bipedal jerboa taxa (Figure 5A ), the long-eared jerboa, Euchoreutes naso, falls within the 95% confidence interval of the regression for metatarsus:femur ( Figure 5B ). Indeed, while both ratios follow a trend toward increasing values in more derived species, they do not share the same distribution .