In the

development Development or developing may refer to: Arts *Development hell, when a project is stuck in development *Filmmaking, development phase, including finance and budgeting *Development (music), the process thematic material is reshaped * Photograph ...

of vertebrate animals, the functional matrix hypothesis is a phenomenological description of bone growth. It proposes that "the origin, development and maintenance of all skeletal units are secondary, compensatory and mechanically obligatory responses to temporally and operationally prior demands of related functional matrices." The fundamental basis for this hypothesis, laid out by Columbia

anatomy Anatomy () is the branch of biology concerned with the study of the structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old science, having it ...

professor Melvin Moss is that bones do not ''grow'' but ''are grown'', thus stressing the

ontogenetic Ontogeny (also ontogenesis) is the origination and development of an organism (both physical and psychological, e.g., moral development), usually from the time of fertilization of the egg to adult. The term can also be used to refer to the st ...

primacy of function over form. This is in contrast to the current conventional scientific wisdom that genetic, rather than epigenetic (non-genetic) factors, control such growth. The theory was introduced as a chapter in a dental textbook in 1962.''New York Times'
Dr. Melvin Moss, 83, Theorist on How Bones of Face Grow, Is Dead
June 29, 2006

References

{{Reflist Developmental biology

See also

References