It’s back to school time and I thought it would be great to kick off the year with some fun facts about human bones. Let’s jump right in!
- Human adult skeletons are made up of about 206 bones.
- Babies are born with about 300 bones that began to fuse and harden together at certain suture and joint points as the baby grows into an adult.
- The longest bone in the body is the femur (thigh bone). It’s also the strongest.
- The smallest bone in the body is the stapes, or stirrups, in the middle ear. It is often very difficult to recover in situ.
Image via Bone Clones
- The only bone not connected to (articulate with) another bone is the hyoid bone. It’s kept in place by ligaments.
- Your funny bone is not a bone! That tingly, weird sensation that you get when you bump your elbow is your ulnar nerve being bumped against the long bone in your arm called the humerus.
- There’s a bone in your skull that has its own saddle! Your skull has about 22 bones. Within the neurocranium, there is a butterfly-shaped bone called the sphenoid. In the middle, or body, of the sphenoid, there is a saddle-shaped depression known as the sella turcica. Sella turcica is Latin for Turkish Saddle as the shape resembles a Turkish saddle. The sella turcica holds the pituitary gland.
- Men and women typically have 12 pairs of ribs. It is a myth that women have more ribs than men. There are cases in which a person may have one extra or one less rib, but these instances are not specific to a sex.
