The skeleton is made of bones, joints between bones, and cartilage. Its function is to provide support and protection for the soft tissues and the organs of the body and to provide points of attachment for the muscles that move the body. There are 206 bones in the human skeleton. They have various shapes long, short, cube-shaped, flat, and irregular. Many of the long bones have an interior space that is filled with bone marrow, where blood cells are made.
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Excerpted from Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia
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