The femur
The femur, the thigh bone, is the longest and strongest bone in the body, about a quarter of a person's height. Its round head fits into the acetabulum of the hip bone. A neck joins the head to the shaft at an angle of about 125 degrees, so the two shafts slope inward and the knees sit under the body.
The right femur from the front, Gray's Anatomy, 1918, figure 244Wikimedia Commons, Henry Vandyke Carter, Public domain (Gray244.png)
Two large knobs below the neck, the greater and lesser trochanters, take the tendons of the hip muscles. At its lower end the femur widens into two condyles, which roll on the tibia at the knee.
A break through the neck of the femur, often from a fall, is the common hip fracture of old age.
Sources
- Susan Standring (ed.), Gray's Anatomy, 42nd ed. (2020), chapter on the pelvic girdle, gluteal region and thigh.
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