Word: femur
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Radcliffe president suffered multiple fractures of the femur (upper leg bone) while getting out of car at Logan Airport...
...proof of its major application. Dr. James Nicholas, director of the Lenox Hill Institute of Sports Medicine in New York, calls the knee the body's most vulnerable joint, "the most complicated and the least suited to perform what it is asked to do." Ligaments joining the femur and tibia wrap around the knee to keep the bones together; the only cushion between these bones is two thin bands of cartilaginous tissue called menisci. Unlike the shoulder and hip joints, which are buried under layers of muscle, the knee is protected only by the kneecap and a thin layer...
Over a period of ten days, the scientists turned up eight bone fragments from two different individuals. One, discovered last November by White, is the upper part of a left femur, or thighbone, about 6 in. long. A skilled anatomist, White was able to judge not only the was able to judge not only the creature's height but also its sex and age: male, about 16 or 17 years old. From markings showing where the muscles were attached to the bone, he also determined that this ancient teen-ager walked upright...
...broken leg. Gertsch, 38, felt what he thought was a cramp starting after seven miles. But he was determined to finish, and so he pounded on for 19 more miles before collapsing at the finish line. Doctors, who later set his right femur with a steel rod, theorized that his powerful thigh muscle had acted as a splint until he finally relaxed at race...
Most anthropological theory is based upon fragmentary evidence: a femur here, an incisor there. But what Johanson found needed no jigsaw reconstruction. The collection of dozens of bones was literally the skeleton in Homo sapiens' closet. Nicknamed Lucy (because the Beatles' song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was playing on a tape machine in the expedition's camp), the original owner of the bones was not the most prepossessing of creatures. She stood about 3½ ft. tall and had a head the size of a softball. But despite her size, Lucy turned...