Images Dated 17th February 2004

Adult hand X-ray

Adult hand bones. Coloured X-ray of the healthy hand of an adult, showing the bone arrangement. An outline of the flesh is seen. Bones of the hand consist of eight small carpals in the wrist (centre left), which articulate with the two long forearm bones (far left). Five metacarpal bones (at centre) make up the palm of the hand. Each finger has three phalanges, except the thumb which has two such bones. This skeleton enables the human hand to be used with great flexibility, helped especially by the joint between the wrist and the opposable thumb. This well-adapted hand allowed our ancestors to use tools, facilitating human evolution

© CNRI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Iceberg in Ross Sea, Antarctica

Iceberg floating in the Ross Sea, Antarctica. An iceberg is a mass of land ice which has broken off or "calved" from either the end of a glacier or from an ice shelf. This iceberg separated from the Ross Ice Shelf, a large sheet of floating ice which covers some 160, 000 square miles of sea off the Antarctic coastline

© DOUG ALLAN/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY