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When a manual count on our bodies didn't work, we typed "bones human body" into the Yahoo! search box and set out to find your answer. The first result was a page on Osteology from the online version of Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body. There we learned that the skeleton of an adult human is comprised of 206 bones and two systems, the axial skeleton (the trunk of our body) and the appendicular skeleton (our limbs). The bones themselves are divided up into four classes: long bones (which make up the limbs), short bones (which are grouped together to strengthen our skeleton), flat bones (which protect our body and provide a place for muscles
to attach), and, our personal favorite, irregular bones (those oddly shaped bones that don't fit into any of the other three categories). At Education World, we picked up some other interesting facts about the human skeleton. For instance, while the adult skeleton contains 206 bones, the skeleton of an infant contains 350 (the bones fuse together as you grow). And more than half of your 206 bones are found in your hands and feet. If you want to learn more about the major bones in your body, be sure to drop by the Bone Zone, where the friendly skeleton will tell you everything you want to know. And for spectacular close-ups of
individual bones, pay a visit to the eSkeletons Project.
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