Wildernesse (Tiffany) has an interesting post on chicken bones and Red Junglefowl. Check it out.
Bones are interesting things, aren’t they? I love looking at them. From these bones, I know that the chickens we ate were not adults—the epiphyses were not fully attached. Long bones like femurs and tibia don’t fuse to their epiphyses until we are nearly adults—same for other animals—because the ends of the long bones (under the epiphyses) are where growth occurs, and when we reach our final height our epiphyses fuse to the long part of the bone and growth ends. This occurs in general around a certain age—which is one way forensic anthropologists can tell a skeleton’s age range. For example, human femurs fuse from 18-20 years old—so if you find a human skeleton without fully fused femural epiphyses, then you are very likely to have a juvenile. I’m almost 26, and most likely all of my bones are finished fusing.
