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The largest bone in the human body is the femur in the leg, “nearly 20 inches long (50 centimeters) in adults,” Glatter told Live Science in an email. “It’s commonly referred to as the thigh bone.”

The femur “extends from the hip down towards the knee,” Glatter said. It normally constitutes about 27.5% of a person’s stature, according to Guinness World Records. The longest recorded femur measured 30 inches (76 cm), which belonged to Julius Koch, better known as The Giant Constantin – a German-born man with gigantism who lived from 1872 to 1902 – Guinness World Records noted.

The femur is not only the longest bone in the body, but also its strongest, capable of supporting as much as 30 times the weight of your body, according to the Cleveland Clinic. “It helps to support the weight of the skeleton and is critical for stability and walking,” Glatter said.

Human femurs can resist compression forces of about 1,800 to 2,500 pounds (800 to 1,100 kilograms), according to Britannica. This strength helps explain why it is one of the most well-preserved bones in skeletal remains, helping it make great contributions to archaeology, according to a 2019 study in the Journal of Clinical Medicine Research.

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https://www.livescience.com/longest-bone-shortest-bone