Research Article Morphometric and Statistical Analysis of the Palmaris Longus Muscle in Human and Non-Human Primates

Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The palmaris longus is considered a phylogenetic degenerate metacarpophalangeal joint flexor muscle in humans, a small vestigial forearmmuscle; it is the most variable muscle in humans, showing variation in position, duplication, slips and could be reverted. It is frequently studied in papers about human anatomical variations in cadavers and in vivo, its variation has importance in medical clinic, surgery, radiological analysis, in studies about high-performance athletes, in genetics and anthropologic studies.Most studies about palmaris longus in humans are associated to frequency or case studies, but comparative anatomy in primates and comparative morphometry were not found in scientific literature. Comparative anatomy associated to morphometry of palmaris longus could explain the degeneration observed in this muscle in two of three of the great apes. Hypothetically, the comparison of the relativ