How many bones are there in an adult human body?

How to get close to this number

Build it in blocks. The spine contributes a couple of dozen, the ribcage a couple of dozen more, the skull around the same, and then — as this site's companion questions show — the hands and feet between them contribute over half the total. Adding those groups gets you close, and it is far more robust than trying to recall a single memorised figure.

The fact that catches people is that the number goes down with age. A newborn has substantially more bones, and many fuse during growth, particularly in the skull and the spine. A count of bones is therefore a count for a specific life stage, which is why the question specifies an adult — and why "how many bones does a person have" has no single answer.

Even for adults the figure is a convention rather than a constant. Some people have extra small bones in the feet or an additional rib, sesamoid bones vary between individuals, and different anatomical traditions count some structures differently. The standard figure is the one taught and quoted everywhere, and it is best understood as a well-established reference value rather than a measurement.