ABSTRACT
More than four hundred non-metric variants have been described for the human skeleton in the anatomical and anthropological literature (Saunders 1989). They vary in frequency from those which are rarely found in most populations, to those where, in some groups, the ‘abnormal’ form is almost as common as the ‘normal’ form. As they are so heterogeneous, classifying them can be problematic. In order to try and illustrate the range of variants which may be encountered in human skeletal material, a seven-point classification is used here.
