A surrogate forelimb: evolution, function and development of the avian cervical spine

RD Marek - Journal of Morphology, 2023 - Wiley Online Library
The neck is a critical portion of the avian spine, one that works in tandem with the beak to act
as a surrogate forelimb and allows birds to manipulate their surroundings despite the lack of …

Somite development and regionalisation of the vertebral axial skeleton

SA Weldon, AE Münsterberg - Seminars in Cell & Developmental Biology, 2022 - Elsevier
A critical stage in the development of all vertebrate embryos is the generation of the body
plan and its subsequent patterning and regionalisation along the main anterior-posterior …

Presumed killers? Vultures, stakeholders, misperceptions, and fake news

SA Lambertucci, A Margalida… - … Science and Practice, 2021 - Wiley Online Library
Vultures and condors are among the most threatened avian species in the world due to the
impacts of human activities. Negative perceptions can contribute to these threats as some …

Variable stiffness and antagonist actuation for cable-driven manipulators inspired by the bird neck

V Muralidharan, N Testard… - Journal of …, 2023 - asmedigitalcollection.asme.org
This paper discusses stiffness and antagonistic actuation in light-weight cable-driven bio-
inspired manipulators suitable for safe interactions. Manipulators under study are built upon …

Evolutionary versatility of the avian neck

RD Marek, PL Falkingham… - … of the Royal …, 2021 - royalsocietypublishing.org
Bird necks display unparalleled levels of morphological diversity compared to other
vertebrates, yet it is unclear what factors have structured this variation. Using three …

Identification and control of a 3-X cable-driven manipulator inspired from the bird's neck

B Fasquelle, P Khanna… - Journal of …, 2022 - asmedigitalcollection.asme.org
This paper is devoted to the control and identification of a manipulator with three anti-
parallelogram joints in series, referred to as X-joints. Each X-joint is a tensegrity one-degree …

The neck as a keystone structure in avian macroevolution and mosaicism

RD Marek, RN Felice - BMC biology, 2023 - Springer
Background The origin of birds from non-avian theropod dinosaur ancestors required a
comprehensive restructuring of the body plan to enable the evolution of powered flight. One …

Ostrichrl: A musculoskeletal ostrich simulation to study bio-mechanical locomotion

V La Barbera, F Pardo, Y Tassa, M Daley… - arXiv preprint arXiv …, 2021 - arxiv.org
Muscle-actuated control is a research topic that spans multiple domains, including
biomechanics, neuroscience, reinforcement learning, robotics, and graphics. This type of …

A class of bionic hyper-redundant robots mimicking the bird's neck

J He, G Wen, J Liu - Acta Mechanica Sinica, 2023 - Springer
Some birds' necks show excellent flexible bending ability, which can be mimicked to design
bionic robot. The main challenge is how to deal with the bird neck's inherent flexibility and …

Estimating motion between avian vertebrae by contact modeling of joint surfaces

M Furet, A Abourachid, C Böhmer… - Computer Methods in …, 2022 - Taylor & Francis
Estimating the motion between two bones is crucial for understanding their biomechanical
function. The vertebral column is particularly challenging because the vertebrae articulate at …