Let bone and muscle talk together: a study of real and virtual dissection and its implications for femoral musculoskeletal structure of chimpanzees

Abstract

Proximal femoral morphology and associated musculature are of special relevance to the understanding of hominoid locomotor systems. Knowledge of bone-muscle correspondence in extant hominoids forms an important comparative basis for inferring structure-function relationships in fossil hominids. However, there is still a lack of consensus on the correspondence between muscle attachment sites and surface morphology of the proximal femoral diaphysis in chimpanzees. Two alternative observations have been proposed regarding the attachment site positions of gluteus maximus (GM) and vastus lateralis (VL) relative to two prominent surface features of the proximal femoral diaphysis, the lateral spiral pilaster and the inferolateral fossa. Here, we use a combination of virtual and physical dissection in an attempt to identify the exact correspondence between muscle attachment sites and osteological features in two specimens of Pan troglodytes verus. The results show that the insertion of the GM tendon is consistently inferolateral to the lateral spiral pilaster, and that a part of the inferolateral fossa consistently forms the attachment site of the VL muscular fibers. While overall musculoskeletal features are similar in the two specimens examined in this study, GM and VL exhibit different degrees of segregation at the level of the inferolateral fossa. One specimen exhibited tendinous GM fibers penetrating the posteromedial part of VL, with both GM and VL inserting at the inferolateral fossa. In the other specimen, GM and VL were separated by a lateral intermuscular septum, which inserted into the inferolateral fossa. Variation of proximal femoral muscle attachments in chimpanzees is thus greater than previously thought. Our results indicate that a conspicuous osteological feature such as the inferolateral fossa does not necessarily correspond to the attachment site of a single muscle, but could serve as a boundary region between two muscles. Caution is thus warranted when interpreting the surface topography of muscle attachment sites and inferring locomotor functions.