Bones of the Skeleton: Part 1

So how many bones are there in the human body? Well the answer is 206!

When I was learning about the human body, the skeleton would be split in two (not literally)... the axial skeleton, and the appendicular skeleton! What are they? Not as complicated as it sounds... the axial skeleton consists of the spine, ribs and skull whilst the appendicular skeleton covers everywhere else, the upper and lower limbs, as well as the pelvic and shoulder girdles.

Now I'm going to cover the 8 general areas of the body along with the names and amounts of bones.

Remember the axial skeleton? Well I'm going to start with that... The skull! I would hope that the majority of you would know that the skull is the head! This is called the Cranial bone and there's actually 8 in the human body!

What about the spine? As you'd imagine, there are a lot more bones located here... 33 to be precise! These 33 are split up into 5 different sections along the spine. Starting from the neck region, this bone is called the Cervical vertebrae and there are 7 until we reach the next part... the chest area! This bone is called the Thoracic vertebrae where there are 12 bones! We then go down into the lower back and reach a bone called the Lumbar vertebrae, there are 5 of these. (Nearly there!) The next part we enter is... the rump! This is called the Sacral vertebrae and again consists are 5 bones. Lastly... and least consisting of just 4 bones is the Coccygeal vertebrae... this is where our tails used to be once upon a time... seriously!

How can I remember all that?! It's not easy when the information is new to you but there are simple methods that will help you a lot... Take the 1st initials of the bone names that I mentioned, that gives you CTLSC. Then you have to think of a sentence with each word starting with these initials. As usual, I forgot the ones I was taught but here's a very simple example... Chris Tarrant Likes Salted Crisps... pretty lame I know and the sentence I was taught had a different last 2 words... and they are NOT what you are thinking!!!

I was actually going to go through all the bones in this blog but it seems my waffle has taken over a bit and there's more than enough information for 1 blog here! I've now decided that I am going to split the Bones of the skeleton into 2 or 3 parts!

I hope that everyone reading this has found it interesting and I shall be back soon with Part 2!

Barry. :)