Understanding the Tie That Binds: Deciphering the World of the Zygoma

Welcome to Chicago! Direct connections are available to Milwaukee, Detroit, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and all points east, west, north, and south! A little explanation of the above is in order. When I was in eighth grade, in what now seems like the end days of the Cretaceous Period of the Earth's history, we were given an assignment in biology class. The task, which I thought odd at the time, but now actually think quite creative, was to equate each organ or bone of the human body with a city or state of the United States, using their mutual characteristics to align them. Now, given that we were in eighth grade, body part selection could have become a little dicey so we were given a teacher-approved list to choose from (an early lesson in censorship!). As I still have my Composition note-books from that class (I've always been afraid to discard school material in the event that I need to prove I actually I went to classes; my psychiatrist wife has suggested that after receiving many graduate and even honorary degrees I probably don't need to retain everything any longer) I can now look back on what my classmates and I chose. Interestingly, we didn't have many entries because we weren't all that familiar with the body (and our favorite parts were excluded anyway!). My notes show that we had an argument over whether Canada could be considered because we were not sure if it was technically part of the United States (we decided we could include it but not Mexico; obviously, we were at the root of a problem that still lingers today). The entries I found, however, showed that the heart was, naturally, selected to be New York (we were New Yorkers, after all). Washington was elected to be paired with the brain; a femur (someone knew about skiing) was assigned to Denver; the stomach was matched with Boston (we knew they ate beans up there, and New Yorkers don't like people from “Bean town” anyway); the eyes were linked to Los Angeles due to the Cinema; the ears were paired with New Orleans for jazz music; the nasal bones with Arizona because of good air. There was a write-in from the class clown for the anus, but I won't report that city because I like the cheesesteaks there and it could get ugly if my car ever breaks down on I-95. No one chose the zygoma, or any bones of the face or orbit. Neither did anyone even think of Chicago. If I did the assignment today, with my slightly greater knowledge of mammalian anatomy and evolution, I would choose Chicago as the alter ego of the zygoma. You see, the zygoma is the Chicago of the mammalian body. Chicago is the hub of the United States: most trains, planes, products such as grain and especially meat shipments, must pass through it. It is, as the great poet Carl Sandburg wrote in 1914, the “City of Big Shoulders” (Sandburg, 1914.) Chicago is the bridge that links the heartland of America together: Even a cursory visit to historic Union Station or frenetic O'Hare Airport will show the seemingly unending comings and goings to the heart and soul (and breadbaskets) of the United States. It is a city full of real people who work at real jobs doing real things that actually matter. As a native New Yorker, I always feel a little guilty when I'm in Chicago; I love my city, but I also know that we get most of the attention and glitz (and what's left over goes to La La Land) while it is places like Chicago and Chicagoans that are always working, lugging my fancy steaks on those big shoulders to connect to trains bound for Cleveland and Pittsburgh and then points east and eventually my fancy dinner at The Four Seasons here in The Big Apple. And, the same refrain could be applied to Chicago that the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield used to utter regarding himself: Chicago “don't get any respect.” Like Chicago, the zygoma (zygomatic bone or malar bone) is at the crossroads of its world, in this case the mammalian face. The zygoma is the de facto center of the facial universe, with aspects of its development, biomechanics, and evolutionary morphings affecting everything in the skull from its central location. And, like the “Second City,” the zygoma rarely gets the attention or focus that it deserves: it is the “Rodney Dangerfield” of facial bones. Due to the presence of the special dental occupants, the teeth, the mandible and maxilla receive a huge amount of special attention. The various bones and outpouchings forming the paranasal sinuses have likewise received considerable focus, including within the pages of The Anatomical Record (e.g., Laitman, 2008; Marquez, 2008). The temporal bone and its majestic and royal inhabitants of hearing and balance have been of central study in fields including otolaryngology, audiology, speech science, neurobiology to mention but a few, and have also been extensively covered here (Laitman, 2012; Van De Water, 2012). Even nasal and turbinate bones of all ilks, sizes, and shapes have drawn attention from developmental and comparative anatomists and otolaryngologists alike, and have similarly lined the pages of this erudite journal (Laitman, 2014; Van Valkenburgh et al., 2014). But, alas, the, mighty zygoma has stood steadfast holding all together but rarely received its just attention. Until now. This Special Issue of The Anatomical Record, “Understanding the Zygoma: A key morphofunctional partition in the craniofacial skeleton,” Guest Edited by Paul Dechow with the assistance of his former post-doctoral student Qian Wang, both of Texas A&M University College of Dentistry, have now changed this equation. Indeed, they created such a Magnus opus on the zygoma, peered into its inner being, anatomy, variation, adaptation, development, biomechanics, and evolution, that the compilation is beyond the scope of a single-volume issue. For the first time, The Anatomical Record will publish a two-volume Special Issue. This month (December, 2016) will focus on “Development, Adaptation, Structure and Function” of the Zygoma (Dechow and Wang, 2016, this issue) and in January of 2017, the other half of the Special Issue will be devoted to an exploration of its “Evolution” from Agnatha and Tetrapods through dinosaurs to fossil humans to us. This Special Issue has been a monumental task and could not have been effectuated were it not for the diligence and efforts of Paul Dechow. A few words must be said regarding Paul and his contributions to zygoma science that, I think, may explain why he is probably the only person who could have hatched this rather large egg. Paul and I have similar backgrounds, having trained in the worlds of physical anthropology and anatomy, and got to know one another at meetings of our physical anthropological colleagues, starting in the late 1970s. For those of you who do not know of this sub-species, they are most interesting; many are very bright, and some extremely kind. Indeed, I have met many colleagues during my talks at their national meetings. You may note that I said “during” my talks because civility has not been a blessing all were given and some would bellow out their disagreements with me while I was speaking from platform! Indeed, at one platform session that I was presenting at, the session chair was dressed in an ape costume throughout my talk (attention was diverted away from me; this was his intention as he disagreed with my conclusions). Paul and I were partly raised in this environment. At AAA meetings, you did not speak until you were spoken to; Lord help you if you interrupted one of the great dons of the Anatomy world (for fellow AAA baby boomers, can you imagine being rude to Betty Hay or Don Fawcett? Can you imagine working in Greenland?!) The physical anthropology world was more akin to the New York Stock exchange during a selling frenzy. You see, many of those ilks were fossil workers intent on showing the world that their fossil was the best, the next missing link and so on. No one received press coverage for the second most interesting fossil, and, assuredly, no one received a penny from any funding agency if you didn't get coverage. So make yourself known and make yourself heard was the mantra. Over all the years that I attended an assortment of such meetings, I always saw Paul. He never interrupted anyone. He sat quietly, patiently, through all the sessions, usually waiting to hear the talks with the most data and least hoopla. He almost always had a question, but never a harsh one nor one that sought to embarrass or belittle. In the age before iPads and iPhones, he sat with his program and took copious notes and always seemed to have some esoteric question about, you guessed it, the funny, unloved bone up there on the cheek. So, amidst all the yelling and screaming, posturing, and posing, “Fossils-of-the-week” coming and going at anthropology meetings, Paul Dechow was getting to know everyone and anyone who was interested in working on his few square inches of the world. Gradually he would branch out to know those and their science in worlds of anatomy proper, dentistry, craniofacial biology, and vertebrate paleontology. Soon, other like-minded souls and students would come to work with him in Dallas, together doing comparative, experimental, and evolutionary research on “his” bone and the influence it had on the world around it. How interesting, that the quiet little bone that does so much of the work and has had such an enormous influence on its environment, yet received relatively little attention, had finally found a champion. Only a champion such as Paul Dechow with the accrued gravitas in the world of zygoma studies could have gathered all the individuals together for this extraordinary Special Issue. Indeed, this novel Special Issue will certainly break new ground and put the zygoma clearly “on the map!”. By the way, Paul got his Ph.D. from The University of Chicago.

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