Count every bone in a typical adult human skeleton. What number do you reach?
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Answer
About 206 bones
A newborn has closer to 300 bones and pieces of cartilage, which fuse together during growth. More than half of an adult's bones are in the hands and feet.
How to estimate it
This number comes from anatomy books, not from arithmetic, but a rough tally shows why it is near 200. Each hand has 27 bones and each foot 26, so hands and feet alone hold 106. The skull has 22, the spine 26, the rib cage 25. Arms, legs, shoulders, hips and the tiny ear bones add 27 more. The textbook total for an adult is 206 bones.
Source: Gray's Anatomy; Encyclopaedia Britannica
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