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Vertebra   Listen
noun
Vertebra  n.  (pl. vertebrae)  
1.
(Anat.) One of the serial segments of the spinal column. Note: In many fishes the vertebrae are simple cartilaginous disks or short cylinders, but in the higher vertebrates they are composed of many parts, and the vertebrae in different portions of the same column vary very greatly. A well-developed vertebra usually consists of a more or less cylindrical and solid body, or centrum, which is surmounted dorsally by an arch, leaving an opening which forms a part of the canal containing the spinal cord. From this dorsal, or neural, arch spring various processes, or apophyses, which have received special names: a dorsal, or neural, spine, spinous process, or neurapophysis, on the middle of the arch; two anterior and two posterior articular processes, or zygapophyses; and one or two transverse processes on each side. In those vertebrae which bear well-developed ribs, a tubercle near the end of the rib articulates at a tubercular facet on the transverse process (diapophysis), while the end, or head, of the rib articulates at a more ventral capitular facet which is sometimes developed into a second, or ventral, transverse process (parapophysis). In vertebrates with well-developed hind limbs, the spinal column is divided into five regions in each of which the vertebrae are specially designated: those vertebrae in front of, or anterior to, the first vertebra which bears ribs connected with the sternum are cervical; all those which bear ribs and are back of the cervicals are dorsal; the one or more directly supporting the pelvis are sacral and form the sacrum; those between the sacral and dorsal are lumbar; and all those back of the sacral are caudal, or coccygeal. In man there are seven cervical vertebrae, twelve dorsal, five lumbar, five sacral, and usually four, but sometimes five and rarely three, coccygeal.
2.
(Zool.) One of the central ossicles in each joint of the arms of an ophiuran.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Vertebra" Quotes from Famous Books



... stating results which converted many of those who had been repelled by the enthusiasm of Boucher de Perthes. The two colleagues found in the stony deposits made by the water dropping from the roof of the cave at Eyzies the bones of numerous animals extinct or departed to arctic regions—one of these a vertebra of a reindeer with a flint lance-head still fast in it, and with these were found ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... generations of animal life. Nature yields to its suggestion and leading, and co- works, with all her best and busiest activities, to realise the human ideal; to put muscle there, to straighten that vertebra, to parallel more perfectly those dorsal and ventral lines, to lengthen or shorten those bones; to flesh the leg only to such a joint, and wool or unwool it below; to horn or unhorn the head, to blacken or blanch the face, to put on the whole body a new ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... of a small tree, and began to ascend it. Another shot through the back caused him to fall down dead. A flattened bullet was found in his tongue, having entered the lower part of the abdomen and completely traversed the body, fracturing the first cervical vertebra. Yet it was after this fearful wound that he had risen, and begun climbing with considerable facility. This also was a full-grown male of almost exactly the same dimensions as the ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... parts, chest, upper and lower limbs. The first division takes in head, neck, chest, abdomen and pelvis. The second division takes in head, neck, lower and upper arm and hand. The third division takes in foot, leg, thigh, pelvis and lumbar vertebra. I make this division for the purpose of holding the explorer to the limits of all supplies. In the ellipse of the chest is found all vital supplies; then from that center of life we have two branches only, one of ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still

... days subsequent to the first finding, at a depth of twenty-four feet below the surface, other bones were found—a thigh-bone and a portion of the vertebra, and several pieces of charred wood, the bones apparently belonging to the first-found skeleton. In both cases the bones rested on a fibrous stratum, suspected at the time to be a fragment of coarse matting. This lay upon a floor of soft but solid iron-ore, which retained ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... ribs, twelve in number on each side, which are so distributed that each single muscle is attached, at one end, to the back portion of a rib and, at the other, to a projection of the vertebra a few inches above. The effect of their contraction is to' elevate the middle portion of the ribs and to turn them outward or ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.

... a time when elephants and mastodons roamed over the land, for bones of these huge creatures are quite frequently found. This arrow-point—or, it may be, spear-head—was found twenty feet from the surface; and almost directly above it, and distant only thirteen inches, was a vertebra of an elephant. It appears, then, that some old races lived around the shores of this lake, and, paddling over it, accidentally dropped their arrows, or let them fly at a passing water-fowl;" and, from the near presence of the elephant's bone, it is shown ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... mortuary and examined the corpse of the deceased. The wound has been fully and accurately described by Dr. Davidson, but I observed one fact which I presume he had overlooked. Embedded in the bone of the spine—in the left transverse process of the fourth vertebra—I discovered a small particle of ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman

... and stood some six feet high beside the front gate that opened into a garden where red hollyhocks rose higher than the humbled jaw-bones. Inside the gate, the front walk had long been paved with the vertebrae of whales, each vertebra being laid separately. ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford

... arrived at the same conclusion. The former, during a journey in the Hartz Mountains, at the sight of a bleached deer's skull, and the latter, upon picking up a sheep's skull in the Jewish cemetery at Venice, were struck by the same thought: the skull is only a modified vertebra. Oken founded upon this idea and kindred analogies his profound philosophy of the system of animals and plants which comes very near to the evolution {35} theory, and in his cosmogony traces all organisms to a ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... chosen. It occupied a shield-shaped plateau among low, flat-topped hills. The single street of Tweipans bounded it upon the east, and a rocky ridge upon the western side that might have been the vertebra of some huge reptile of the Diluvian Period, protected camp and village from ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... and 'Journal de l'Anat. et de la Phys.' Mai 1868.) thinks that he has proved that two distinct species have been domesticated, one in the East, and one in North Africa; and that these differed in the number of their lumbar vertebra and in various other parts; but M. Sanson seems to believe that osteological characters are subject to very little variation, which is certainly a mistake. At present no aboriginal or truly wild horse is positively known to exist; for it is commonly believed that the wild horses ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... credit the while for his disinterestedness, he being in happy ignorance of the comparative merits of fresh-water fish when cooked; and therefore he struggled with his miserable, watery, insipid, bony, ill-cooked chub, while Bob picked the fat flakes off the vertebra ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn

... cerecloth and unctuous matter were removed, the features of the face, as far as they could be distinguished, bore a strong resemblance to the portraits of Charles I. To complete the proof, the head was found to have been separated from the trunk by some sharp instrument, which had cut through the fourth, vertebra of the neck.—See "An Account of what appeared on opening the coffin of King Charles I. by Sir Henry Halford, bart." 1813. It was observed at the same time, that "the lead coffin of Henry VIII. had been beaten in about the middle, and ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc



Words linked to "Vertebra" :   axis vertebra, vertebral, dorsal vertebra, atlas vertebra, vertebral column, coccygeal vertebra, sacral vertebra, thoracic vertebra, spine, rachis, transverse process, caudal vertebra, lumbar vertebra, spinal column



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