Let's take a look at the parts of the skeleton. The head is the skull and you have the bones in the face here. You have the neck and rest of the vertebral column here. You have the axial rest of the axial ,which includes the thoracic cavity right here which includes the ribs and the sternum. Now let's take a look at that axial skeleton. You'll notice that there's some vertebrae that have a really weird shape to them here. So you can see that the vertebrae are going to be irregular bones because they're very unusually shaped. You'll also notice that another irregular bone is the coxal bone here and that's going to be this entire piece here as well as the part in the front and down here at the bottom. The face also has irregular bones and you can see by the the structures here in the face these facial bones are also going to be irregular bones. Remember irregular is an unusual type of bone because it doesn't fit any of the other classifications. Now let's look at some of the other classifications of bones. Let's take a look in the arms and legs, which is the appendicular skeleton. At the arms here and the legs here. Long bones are mostly found in the arms and legs. You have the humerus, the ulna, and the radius. The radius is on the thumb side the ulna is on the midline. Then the bones of the hand are the metacarpals and the phlanges. Now even though these phalanges at the end these distal ones they look like they should not be long bones they are because they're longer than they are wide and that's what makes them a long bone. In the legs we have the femur and the larger bone down here which is the tibia and the fibula here on the side on the lateral side. In the foot the phalanges are also going to be long bones as are the metatarsals. Now let's take a look at the short bones. The short bones are going to be the tarsals and you can see they're very small little bones in the foot and they're going to help make up the ankle and then in the hand as well the bones that make up the wrist are also short bones and those are your carpals. We'll learn more about the identification of the bones in the lab. Now you have in the clavicle up here. This is also an example of a long bone because it's longer than it is wide and that's still part of the appendicular skeleton. Just about every long bone you have is in either the arms or the legs. Now you might be thinking that the ribs look awfully long here, but the key here is they're actually curved and flat. It's not that they're long they're actually called flat bones because they're curved and flat. The skull bones up here at the top are also curved and flat, so they're going to also be flat bones. Then here on the back the scapula is an example of a flat bone as well because it's flat and curved. Now don't let this weird structure here confuse you.That doesn't make it an irregular bone. This is a flat bone because the majority of it is flat. But if we look at the hip and the pelvic girdle this is also an irregular bone because it is even though it's got this flat piece to it it also has a lot more curves to it making it an irregular bone.That whole piece there is the coxal bone making that an irregular bone.The ribs are flat bones. The skull which is this part up here is a flat bone, but remember the face is going to be our irregular bones.Then you have this one in the middle here that's a sternum and that's a flat bone as well. So all the bones in your thoracic cavity are flat bones except the vertebrae on back, which is an irregular bone. That helps you identify the different bones of the body and what classifications they are: long bone, short bone, flat bone, or irregular bone. One other short bone that sometimes is called a sesamoid bone is the patella. Patella is a short bone and a sesamoid bone because it's got that little sesame seed shape to it, but in our book we're referring to this as a short bone. That concludes the different classifications of bones in the body.