anatomy · section one
the skeleton
206 bones · 237 joints
Point at the drawing, or search for a bone by any name you know it by. Choosing one marks it in ink and turns everything it joins onto green, because a bone on its own tells you almost nothing — what it does is decided by what it is attached to.
everything it joins onto is inside the same block
“malleus. two of them.”
axial skeleton · middle ear
Malleus
Malleus · two of them · also called hammer, hammer bone
Its handle is embedded in the eardrum, so every vibration of the drum is passed straight on to the incus and down the chain towards the inner ear. You cannot feel it, but a doctor looking in with an otoscope can see it - the pale streak running down the centre of your translucent eardrum is the handle of the malleus pressing against it.
it is already full size at birth - the three ear bones are the only bones that never grow with you
on the drawing: buried inside the temporal bone, and smaller than one pixel of this drawing
what it joins onto
- incudomallear (incudomalleolar) jointsynovial saddle jointbarely any - the two rock together as one unit
62 entries, 206 bones