How many bones are in the human body?
The standard adult count is 206, and babies are born with roughly 300 separate bony elements that fuse during growth — the skull plates, the sacrum, the coccyx and the three pelvic bones each merge into one. The 206 figure is a convention rather than a fact of anatomy. Sesamoid bones, which form inside tendons, vary between individuals: nearly everyone has two in each foot and a kneecap, but many people have extra ones in the hands and feet that are not counted. Roughly one person in ten has a bone the standard count does not include.
How the figure is arrived at
Counting, with a definitional argument about what to count. Anatomical texts settled on 206 by excluding variable sesamoids and counting fused elements as one bone. Different traditions have published 206, 208 and 213 depending on how they treat the hyoid, the auditory ossicles and the sesamoids.
How confident it is
- Low estimate
- 206
- High estimate
- 213
- Spread
- 1.0× between the bounds
Other the human body counts
- How many cells are in the human body? about 30 trillion human cells, plus 38 trillion bacteria
- How many neurons are in the human brain? about 86 billion
- How many muscles are in the human body? about 600 skeletal muscles
- How many hairs are on your head? about 100,000
- How many taste buds do you have? about 2,000 to 8,000
- How long are all your blood vessels? commonly quoted as 100,000 km — but probably closer to 20,000
- How many base pairs are in human DNA? about 3.1 billion per copy — 6.2 billion in most cells
Common questions
- How many bones are in the human body?
- 206 in an adult — about 300 at birth
- How is that estimated?
- Counting, with a definitional argument about what to count. Anatomical texts settled on 206 by excluding variable sesamoids and counting fused elements as one bone. Different traditions have published 206, 208 and 213 depending on how they treat the hyoid, the auditory ossicles and the sesamoids.
Related pages
- How many cells are in the human body? about 30 trillion human cells, plus 38 trillion bacteria
- How many neurons are in the human brain? about 86 billion
- How many muscles are in the human body? about 600 skeletal muscles
- How many hairs are on your head? about 100,000
- How many taste buds do you have? about 2,000 to 8,000
- How long are all your blood vessels? commonly quoted as 100,000 km — but probably closer to 20,000
- How many base pairs are in human DNA? about 3.1 billion per copy — 6.2 billion in most cells
- How many people are there in the world? Living things and the natural world
- How many stars are there in the universe? Space and the universe
- How many countries are there in the world? Things people built
- How many grains of sand are there on Earth? Living things and the natural world
- How many ants are there in the world? Living things and the natural world
- How many trees are there in the world? Living things and the natural world
Sources
- Typical range compiled from manufacturer specifications — At One Place