Mechanical properties and adaptations of some less familiar bony tissues.

Abstract

This review attempts to show the bone community that there are many ways of being a 'bone', and that the range of mechanical properties of bone material is much greater than is conventionally thought to be the case. However the structure-function relationships have in many cases hardly moved beyond mere assertion. There is a pressing need for an examination of some material properties of a whole variety of bones, always using exactly the same testing method, for instance nanoindentation of wet material, so that firm comparisons can be made.