[thedoc (OP)]

Patrock asked the Naked Scientists:
   Good Day.  I have been told that a fine bone structure is a sign of good breeding? Is this in fact true. Thank you very much.
What do you think?

[Colin2B]

What do you mean by good breeding. If you mean superiour then no. If you mean your ancestors valued and selected partners on that basis rather than, say, intelligence then it depends on your relative values and whether you want to be a model or a scientist.

[evan_au]

Bones (and their surrounding muscles) bulk up based on how much work they routinely perform.

To some extent, fine bones are a result of lack of exercise, which (in previous centuries) meant that you had servants to do all the hard work for you. (Today, we all have machines to do the hard work for us.)

I have heard that skeletons from the middle ages have distinctly heavier jaws than modern humans, due to the coarse-milled grains the common people could afford. Today, cheap white bread baked from fine-milled flour leads to less prominent jawbones.

This particular skeletal change is unlikely to have occurred due to fine breeding, but more due to the technological environment.

A current problem for astronauts on the ISS is loss of bone mass despite two hours per day of strenuous exercise. It would be an interesting (if currently unethical) experiment to raise a child entirely in space without a specific exercise program, and see how this affected bones, body shape and general health.