• Question: who deceided the names of the bones e.g the sternum and the mandible?

    Asked by howtaunk1 to Adam, Catherine, Karen, Leila, Nazim on 15 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Adam Stevens

      Adam Stevens answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      I think they mostly come from Latin or Greek.

    • Photo: Karen Masters

      Karen Masters answered on 18 Mar 2012:

      I don’t know.

    • Photo: Leila Battison

      Leila Battison answered on 19 Mar 2012:

      Back in the days when biology was being explored for the first time, latin and other languages were used around the world as a sort of universal translation. The weird words for the bones that we have today usually translate to something pretty normal about their shape or their function in latin or greek.

      So mandible is from the latin ‘mandere’, meaning to chew!

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