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How modern life is transforming the human skeleton

Today it’s an established fact that our skeletons are surprisingly malleable. The pure white remains displayed in museums may seem solid and inert, but the bones beneath our flesh are very much alive – they’re actually pink with blood vessels – and they’re constantly being broken down and rebuilt. So although each person’s skeleton develops according to a rough template set out in their DNA, it is then tailored to accommodate the unique stresses of their life.

This has led to a discipline known as “osteobiography" – literally “the biography of bones” – which involves looking at a skeleton to find out how its owner lived. It relies on the fact that certain activities, such as walking…

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