The Bones of the Matter

(Picture from here.)

I’ve been getting over an injury I got doing judo about a month ago. So, of course, I started thinking about bones.

The skeleton is one of our most obvious anatomical features. I know we can see and feel skin and eyes and hair. But the skeleton is one of our clearest examples of an anatomical system. The bones articulate. They move together. Muscles attach to them.

Where did they come from?

Well, we’re vertebrates. That meas we have a dorsal notochord. There’s an erroneous co...