Bone remodeling during prenatal morphogenesis of the human mental foramen.

From a morphogenetic point of view, the mental foramen of the mandible is a highly suitable model to study the interactions of different tissues such as nerves, vessels, mesenchymal cells, cartilage, and bone. In previous work, we provided a three-dimensional description of the mental foramen at different developmental stages, and now we complement those studies with a three-dimensional visualization of different bone remodeling activities around the mental foramen. Histological serial sections of human embryos and fetuses, ranging in size from 25 to 117 mm crown-rump-length (CRL), were used to characterize the bone remodeling activity (apposition, inactivity, and resorption).