STERNUM • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Sternum

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noun

Sternum n. (pl. L. sterna, E. sternums)

(Anat.) A plate of cartilage, or a series of bony or cartilaginous plates or segments, in the median line of the pectoral skeleton of most vertebrates above fishes; the breastbone. Note: The sternum is connected with the ribs or the pectorial girdle, or with both. In man it is a flat bone, broad anteriorly, narrowed behind, and connected with the clavicles and the cartilages of the seven anterior pairs of ribs. In most birds it has a high median keel for the attachment of the muscles of the wings.

(Zool.) The ventral part of any one of the somites of an arthropod.

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Etymology of 'Sternum'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Sternum" Quotes from Famous Books

... differ more than any wild pigeons, even those classed in distinct genera. The breadth and number of the ribs vary, as well as the processes on them; the number of the vertebrae and the length of the sternum also vary; and the perforations in the sternum vary in size and shape. The oil gland varies in development, and is sometimes absent. The number of the wing-feathers varies, and those of the tail to an enormous extent. The proportions ...

— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... some of the muscles of respiration. If my views are at all correct, the wing of the Apteryx (113/3. "Origin of Species," Edition VI., page 140.) cannot be (page 452 of the "Origin") a nascent organ, as these wings are useless. I dare not trust to memory, but I know I found the whole sternum always reduced in size in all the fancy and confined pigeons relatively to the same bones in the wild Rock-pigeon: the keel was generally still further reduced relatively to the reduced length of the sternum; but in some breeds ...

— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... him as an unstable pituitocentric who succumbed to pituitary insufficiency toward the latter half of his life. We possess the account of the postmortem by Dr. Henry, who performed it. "The whole surface of the body was deeply covered with fat. Over the sternum, where generally the bone is very superficial, the fat was upwards of an inch deep, and an inch and a half or two inches on the abdomen. There was scarcely any hair on the body, and that of the head was thin, ...

— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... sternum Bones extending along the middle line of the ventral portion of the body of most vertebrates, consisting in humans of a flat, narrow bone connected with the clavicles and the ...

— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise

... why cuckoos do not hatch their own eggs; the impediment, he supposes, arises from the internal structure of their parts, which incapacitates them for incubation. According to this gentleman, the crop, or craw, of a cuckoo does not lie before the sternum at the bottom of the neck, as in the gallinae, columbae, etc., but immediately behind it, on and over the bowels, so as to make a ...

— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White

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