206 bones
An adult skeleton has 206 bones. It holds the body up, gives the muscles something to pull on and shields the brain, the heart and the lungs. In a man of 70 kg the skeleton, with the marrow and cartilage it holds, weighs about 10 kg.
A woman's skeleton from the front, with its main bones and groups namedWikimedia Commons, Mariana Ruiz Villarreal (LadyofHats), Public domain (Human skeleton front en.svg)
The bones fall into two sets. The axial skeleton runs down the middle of the body: the skull, the vertebral column, the ribs and the sternum, 80 bones in all. The appendicular skeleton is the 126 bones of the arms and legs, with the girdles that join them to the trunk.
The axial skeleton in blue: the skull, the ear ossicles, the hyoid, the vertebral column and the rib cageWikimedia Commons, Mariana Ruiz Villarreal (LadyofHats), Public domain (Axial skeleton diagram.svg)
This model shows a man's skeleton. It lacks the three small bones inside each ear.
Sources
- Susan Standring (ed.), Gray's Anatomy, 42nd ed. (2020), chapter on the functional anatomy of the musculoskeletal system.
- International Commission on Radiological Protection, Report of the Task Group on Reference Man, ICRP Publication 23 (Oxford: Pergamon, 1975).
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