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New Human Body Part Discovered

Julius_Van_Der_Beak

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That seems fairly large. How the hell could they have not known that was there? Is it because ligaments are generally subjected to decay? I wish the article would have gone into that.
 

21%

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This might be the answer to my knee problem! Yes! Finally!
 

gromit

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Oh I have seen people posting about that!

Having been in a cadaver lab I can see how people wouldn't see something if they weren't looking for it. There's so much random tissue in there and it's not always so clear what is what, like it is in that dissection image in the link. There's all this connective tissue and fascia, and a lot of the ligaments are all continuous with other stuff. People make things look clear by dissecting it.
 

Julius_Van_Der_Beak

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Oh I have seen people posting about that!

Having been in a cadaver lab I can see how people wouldn't see something if they weren't looking for it. There's so much random tissue in there and it's not always so clear what is what, like it is in that dissection image in the link. There's all this connective tissue and fascia, and a lot of the ligaments are all continuous with other stuff. People make things look clear by dissecting it.

But don't they dissect cadavers? Or has that gone out of fashion?
 

Julius_Van_Der_Beak

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Yeah that's what I was talking about. Cadaver dissection.

You said that they make things look clear by dissecting it, which kind of threw me off. Do you mean to say that it isn't clear unless it's dissected the right away? It could be embedded within muscles or something, for instance, right (maybe not specifically that in this case)?
 

gromit

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You said that they make things look clear by dissecting it, which kind of threw me off. Do you mean to say that it isn't clear unless it's dissected the right away? It could be embedded within muscles or something, for instance, right (maybe not specifically that in this case)?

Yes exactly. Maybe not embedded in muscles but embedded in other tissues, or maybe it's sort of blending into something else. There's a lot of tidying up that goes on in dissection. They cleaned it up very clearly in that photo in the link. If you just sliced open a leg at the knee it would look like a total mess in there (if you are brave, type in "knee surgery" into youtube and you will see what it looks like on the inside).

It's still a very huge deal if they discovered a totally new ligament though. That's significant.
 
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Yes exactly. Maybe not embedded in muscles but embedded in other tissues, or maybe it's sort of blending into something else. There's a lot of tidying up that goes on in dissection. They cleaned it up very clearly in that photo in the link. If you just sliced open a leg at the knee it would look like a total mess in there (if you are brave, type in "knee surgery" into youtube and you will see what it looks like on the inside).

It's still a very huge deal if they discovered a totally new ligament though. That's significant.

Oh yes. Clearing out the fat from a hefty corpse can be as tedious and time-consuming as dusting off a new archaeological find, but much stinkier and more repulsive.

That said, I'm surprised we didn't find something this large before now... A microscopic layer of the cornea, I can understand. But...
 

gromit

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Oh yes. Clearing out the fat from a hefty corpse can be as tedious and time-consuming as dusting off a new archaeological find, but much stinkier and more repulsive.

That said, I'm surprised we didn't find something this large before now... A microscopic layer of the cornea, I can understand. But...

Ha. Yes stinky indeed.

Hm. So apparently they suspected SOMETHING was there, but my understanding is that they hadn't designated it as a ligament, per se, until just recently. In 1879, they had identified it as a "pearly resistant fibrous band."
 

/DG/

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Oh yes! My professor told us about this recently. It's amazing that it would be possible for us to not know about even all of the ligaments we have in our bodies! Crazy.
[MENTION=4660]msg_v2[/MENTION] - Yup, I can verify that things tend to look like a giant mess when you go about dissecting cadavers. One of the students that was dissecting one of ours mistakenly removed an entire system of nerves because they couldn't tell what was going on (brachial plexus, if you're interested). Granted, a professional would not make such a mistake, but it is true that it's hard to tell where everything is at first. Not to mention all of the fat everywhere...

Ha. Yes stinky indeed.

Hm. So apparently they suspected SOMETHING was there, but my understanding is that they hadn't designated it as a ligament, per se, until just recently. In 1879, they had identified it as a "pearly resistant fibrous band."

It's really strange how long it took for them to properly investigate that. I guess proper science just takes time? I was watching a YouTube video about how a new species of animal, the Olinguito, had been discovered that was kept in a museum for decades already. Of course, the person who discovered the new species had to do research on the matter and find more samples in other museums before officially declaring it to be a new species.

Here is the video if anyone is interested:
 

Lark

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1879!!!

That guy is never going to know that he's been vindicated but that is bleeding awesome that as far back as that someone had the smarts to guess even if the tech hadnt been invented to prove them correct yet.
 
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