Systematic review of vertebrate limb bone content

This dataset shows a systematic review of the literature examining limb bone (femur, tibia, fibula, humerus, radius, ulna) characteristics in diverse vertebrates. These characteristics include ash content, percent phosphorus, bone mineral density, bone density, and bone mineral content (defined in dataset). , We performed a systematic review to locate sources that measure bone in wild animals using one of the following metrics: total bone density, bone mineral density, and bone mineral content. To be included, papers had to (1) measure bone content in a wild or museum animal (we excluded experimental animals to remove human intervention as a confounding factor), (2) clearly state methodology and units, and (3) use only modern specimens (we excluded fossil animals because taphonomy affects bone). Although we read and assessed all relevant collected papers, we only extracted measurements from tetrapod limb bones (i.e. femur, tibia, fibula, humerus, radius, ulna). Limb bones were by far the most studied bones (for our search criteria) and focusing on them allowed us to compare similar bones across various taxa rather than looking at a limited dataset of more rarely studied bones. While this limited our scope and excluded fishes, this systematic review aimed not to comprehensively characterize b..., , # Systematic review of vertebrate limb bone content

## Description of the data and file structure

This dataset consists of an excel spreadsheet with 6 sheets.
1\. Sheet descriptions: describes what is in each of the other 4 sheets.
2\. Metadata: describes the headings for the \"core data\" sheet.
3\. Abbreviations
4\. Types: describes the different bone measurements included in our dataset.
5\. Core data: all bone measurements collected in our systematic review, along with the other data described in \"metadata\"
6\. Accession numbers: citations for all data included in the dataset. Accession numbers are also included in \"core data\" so they can be matched easily.

Because of the nature of our dataset (several types of measurements, and no single data entry had every single one), there are many blanks in our dataset. They are filled as \"NA.\"

# **Data sources**

Actis, E. A., Mosconi, S., Jahn, G. A., & Superina, M. (2017). Reproductive implications of bone mineral density in an arma...