FAQ: BONES and BONE PRACTICAL
The bone practical is a timed exam. You will have one minute at each “station”. Each station may have: a
bone, two bones, a skull, a part of a skull, etc. The types of questions to expect: Name the bone. Or, Name
the feature of the bone (indicated by tape/arrow). Or, Is this a right or left bone? You need to provide
bone names/bony feature names from memory, there is no “word bank” provided. Spelling does count,
but I am a reasonable person. Try your best, and do the work, and trust me that spelling won’t be the
“make or break” for your practical exam score. Try to PRINT as clearly and neatly as possible on your
practical. Yes, you may touch/move bones while at a station, but you MUST put them back the way you
found them with any tape/arrows/indicators intact.
As for Chapter 7- I don’t lecture on it. I teach it in lab while helping you learn the bones. You will
absolutely want to reference it while learning the bones. However, I don’t think that reading Ch 7 from
beginning to end is a good use of time. You need to know the bones and their features but you do NOT
need to know function. See below for futher clarification.
For the skull- I may separate the mandible or the “cranial cap” from a given skull. Other than that, the
skull will be articulated (ie. you will not need to recognize an ethmoid bone in isolation, or a frontal bone
in isolation, etc, etc. An isolated bone such as this has appeared on the practical as extra credit, however).
For any hole or depression or projection in the skull (more properly called a foramen or canal or fossa,
etc), you do NOT NEED to know the function of this hole, etc. (ie. you do not need to know what
nerve/blood vessels pass through). The only BIG, noteworthy exceptions are: vertebral foramen, orbit
and optic canal.
For all other holes/depressions/grooves/projections, throughout the skeleton, you only need to know
location and name of hole/projection/etc. not “function” (as would be found in Ch 7). Many of these
holes/depressions/projections/etc. will become extremely important as muscle origin or insertion
points and or joint surfaces, so we will cover the functions then, but not now.
Temporal process of zygomatic bone and zygomatic arch. They are different. Look it up!
For vertebrae- You MUST recognize C1 (atlas) and C2 (axis) as unique, individual vertebrae. Beyond
those two, named vertebrae, if you are given a vertebral bone, you need to provide only which type of
vertebrae it is (not which #)- so, for example a cervical vertebral bone, but not C6; or a thoracic vertebral
bone, not T5, etc. You do need to know how many of each class of vertebrae are in the column. (7
cervical, 12 throacic, 5 lumbar, 5 sacral, 4 coccyx).
Ribs- Yes, you may have an isolated, single rib on the practical. However, you do not need to know which
# rib it is. But, you do need to know a right rib from a left rib (ask me in lab, its easy!). And, you need to
know how many true ribs, false ribs and floating ribs are in the body. Note- women and men have the
same number of ribs, despite Biblical stories/folklore.
Hyoid- just don’t forget about it
For ALL of the appendicular bones- you need to know right from left. Yes, even the clavicle, the patella,
the fibula, the hip bones (os coxae) (those are the tricky and/or fun ones) and the other obvious ones.
For HANDS and FEET, WRISTS and ANKLES bones- the bones that make up these structures will be
articulated (put together, not floating around individually). This makes your task much, much simpler.
Learning the wrist (carpal) bones and the ankle bones (the tarsals) is hard work, but is totally do-able.
See bone list for tips!
The metacarpals, (bones of the “palm”), are numbered I-V, but phalanges (fingers) are numbered 1-5, and
they start with the thumb (which we will now call the pollex). FYI The “big toe” is the hallux.
The hip bones will MOST LIKELY be disarticulated from each other and the lower vertebrae. Thus, you
will MOST LIKELY need to know a right from left hip bone, individually. You should know that the hip
bone (or os coxae) was once three separate bones (the three bones finally fuse together at the very end of
puberty). You need to know the three bones (ilium, ischium, pubis), and which region of the
mature/fused hip bone they represent.
You do not need to recognize a male pelvis from a female pelvis for the practical. You should know some
major differences between them for the lecture exam.