Bones - Without Them, You'd be a Puddle Quiz

Answer: Hyoid

The hyoid bone lives in your throat between your chin and your thyroid cartilage (Adam's apple). U-shaped, its name come from the Greek word 'hyoeides' which meant 'shaped like the letter upsilon'. The hyoid is secured in position by muscles from three directions. Its function is to assist with movement of the tongue and swallowing.

The incus and malleus are both bones in the ear. The talus is a bone in your ankle.

Answer: 24

The rib at the top, under your clavicle (collar bone) is your first rib. They are then numbered consecutively down to the twelfth rib. Ribs number one to seven are considered true ribs. They curve around the thorax from the thoracic vertebrae to the sternum, where they are attached with tissue called the costal cartilage.

The next three ribs on each side are called false ribs. While they start at a vertebra and curve around, they don't attach directly to the sternum. They are secured in position by cartilage which is linked to the cartilage securing the seventh rib.

The eighth, ninth and tenth ribs on each side are called false ribs. Some resources will also call the 11th and 12th ribs false ribs, but you'll also find them referred to as floating ribs.

These ribs start at the vertebrae but aren't attached to any other bodily structure. They 'float' unsecured.

Answer: 26%

The length of your femur is approximately 26% of your height. The femur is also the heaviest bone in the body and is considered the strongest bone when tested by several different methods. Why is the fact that the femur is 26% of a person's height significant? Armed with this knowledge, anthropologists and archaeologists can state, with reasonable certainty, the height a person would have been purely based on a femur. Other data can be collected from a skeleton including the person's general health and their weight (persons carrying more weight will have thicker bones to support them), and old wounds or illnesses of the bones can be assessed. Now that you know all this, if for some strange reason you need to know the length of your femur, simply divide your height by four and you'll have a good approximation.

The photo is of an 18th century engraving called 'Osteographia' or 'The anatomy of the bones' by William Cheselden, 1688-1752.

Answer: No

The pain you feel when you hit your not so funny 'funny bone' is due to striking your ulnar nerve rather than the bone. Your ulnar nerve travels from your spinal cord to your ring and little fingers. In the course of its descent, it lies at the lower, inner end of the humerus between the bone and the skin. There is very little cushioning to protect the nerve against bumps. If you hit the nerve you will know it as it's quite painful and likely to be so for a few minutes. It's this jarring of the nerve that causes the pain and explains why the pain can radiate down to your ring and little fingers rather than the pain being localised at the site of the injury.

The humerus is the fourth longest bone of the body. The longest three are in the legs i.e. the femur, tibia and fibula.

Answer: Spinous process

Most of your vertebrae have a mass of bone roughly circular in shape as their foundation. This section is called the body. From the body arises an arch of bone which forms the spinal canal. This is the part of the vertebra that the spinal cord passes through. The arch is the point where other sections of the vertebrae called processes arise. These are reasonably flat pieces of bone which serve as anchoring points for muscles and ligaments. The transverse processes which point out to the side of the each vertebra are the part of each thoracic vertebrae which meets the corresponding rib. The spinous processes point backwards and are also anchoring points for muscles and ligaments.

By bending over in such a fashion while standing, a medical professional can make an assessment of the spinal alignment, checking for the early development of scoliosis or other malalignments such as a lordosis. If the spine doesn't appear to be straight, further investigations can proceed to determine if treatment is required for what can be a debilitating condition if left until it is severe.

Answer: Sutures

Suture is a general term for a rigid joint where two or more anatomical parts have cemented together. The term is also used in other spheres of biology such as conchology. If you've seen a conical or spiral seashell, you will have seen how the shell is made up of smaller parts seemingly fused together. The lines delineating the separate parts are called sutures.

Human babies are born with their skull bones joined by cartilaginous tissue rather than being fused together. This allows for movement and even some overlapping of the bones during birth, allowing for an easier birth for both mother and child than if the skull was a completely rigid structure. (For all the mothers reading this, note I said 'easier', not 'easy'!)

In addition to making the birthing (relatively) easier, the cartilage also allows for a baby's brain to grow without compressing it. By the age of around 18 months, all the sutures will have fused, the skull now forming a totally rigid, protective casing for the brain. How many bones are there in a human skull? I once asked a neurosurgeon this exact question and he looked at me blankly as he had no idea. He'd never had to count them. Various references will state anything from 22 to 45 depending on which bones are chosen to select for inclusion!

Answer: Callus

If you've sustained an injury of sufficient force to break a bone, there will also be damage to the tissues (muscle, blood vessels, cartilage etc.) around that break. A blood clot called a fracture haematoma will form at the site. New blood vessels will form and the haematoma will solidify slightly to have a jelly-like consistency. Phagocytes remove tissue that can't be used by the bone, and fibroblasts will start producing collagen fibres which replace the haematoma. A bony matrix will form and transform the collagen fibres into bony tissue through mineralisation. If you break a bone as an adult, this process will take about six weeks, a little quicker for children. More material than is required for normal bone configuration will be laid down, hence the callus you can see in the picture. It's only at this stage that the callus can be seen on an X-ray.

After three months of healing, the bone will have about 80% of its previous strength. A further year, perhaps a year and a half, is required before the bone has the same strength it did prior to the injury. The bone will gradually return to its normal shape as part of the healing process but this may take two years or more. The poor fracture patient in the picture appears to have quite a bit of healing going on, but one can only assume he died of something else before the process could be completed. The picture was taken during the US Civil War.

Cicatrix is another word for 'scar'. Keloid is a type of scarring in which the scar tissue grows excessively. A fibroid is a benign lump of fibrous tissue.

Answer: Stirrup

To contrast the size of the biggest and smallest bones in the body, we'll take the femur, the heaviest bone, and compare it to the stapes. The femur from an adult female weighs about 261g (9.2oz). The stapes weighs a minuscule 2-4 milligrams (0.00071-0.00015oz).

The femur of an average female adult is about 43cm (17in) long. The stapes ranges in size from 2.5-3.3mm long (0.10-0.13 in). Your femur lets you mobilise on your two feet. Your stapes performs a vital role in hearing. It relays vibrations from the incus (another small bone in the ear) to the fenestra ovalis (oval window), allowing us to hear.

Answer: Foramen magnum

I hope you picked up on the clue 'great hole' in the question as the term 'foramen magnum' comes from the Latin for 'great hole'. This great hole is the aperture through which your spinal cord, several arteries which feed the brain, ligaments and a membrane enter the cranial vault (skull).

Compared with a great ape such as a gorilla, the human foramen magnum is positioned more to the front of the skull. The same can be seen in skulls belonging to Australopithecus africanus specimens dating back two to three million years. This is an indication to scientists that Australopithecus africanus, like we Homo sapiens, walked erect rather than being quadrupeds like the great apes.

The other terms are all related to the skull. The area in green is the posterior (rear) fossa, the area in blue/grey is the anterior (front) fossa. The sella turcica is a small hollow in the yellow (middle) region in which the pituitary gland sits as it controls many functions in our bodies via the production of vital hormones.

Answer: Radial artery

The radius and ulna both extend from the elbow to the wrist, forming a joint at either end. The radius is more important at the wrist than at the elbow, the ulna forming most of the elbow joint with the humerus. The radial artery's pulsations are what you feel for when taking a pulse on the side of the wrist next to the thumb.

The radial artery begins at the elbow, being one of the major branches of the brachial artery. The brachial artery is an extension of the axillary artery, which in turn came from the large subclavian artery close to the heart.

Another major branch of the brachial artery is the ulnar artery. It meets up with the radial artery in the palm of your hand to form an arch of arteries supplying your fingers with blood.