A tiny knee bone called fabella was previously thought to be a rudimentary organ that has virtually disappeared during human evolution. But from the end of the 19th century, this bone began to return to human skeletons.
In 1918, there were about 11% of people with such a bone, and many had only one leg. However, in 2018, the number of people around the world with a fabella bone in their skeletons turned out to be 39%. That is, now this bone is found in two out of five people.
Fabella sits in a tendon behind the patella and scientists still don't know what it is for. It is only known that it can cause osteoarthritis. And why the number of people with such a bone has increased dramatically in just 100 years is also not clear.
Now in all biology textbooks it is written that a person has 206 bones in the skeleton, but apparently these data will soon be recognized as obsolete. In this case, the fabella bone is often called the "appendix of the skeleton", since its purpose seems to be just as meaningless.
According to one of the versions, the return of the almost lost part of the skeleton was due to the fact that over the past 100 years people began to eat significantly better and, accordingly, became heavier, which increased the load on the knees. And the additional bone supposedly helps to reduce this load.
However, when the fabella is actively in contact with the knee cartilage, it can lead to very painful osteoarthritis. Every fifth Englishman over 45 suffers from osteoarthritis and those who have fabella in their knees are twice as likely to get sick.
According to some experts, if you have fabella in your knee, you should seek immediate surgery to have it removed so as not to suffer from osteoarthritis in old age.
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The most recent study, published in the Journal of Anatomy, was conducted by researchers at Imperial College London. They looked at more than 21,000 scientific papers, scans and X-rays with fabella over the past 150 years from 27 countries and found that in 1918 the number of people with fabella worldwide was 11.2 percent, and in 2018 this figure increased in three times and became equal to 39 percent.
Translated from Latin "fabella" means "little bean" and this bone is really similar in shape to a bean. Apparently, once upon a time, it played an important role in the body of human ancestors, but then it was assumed that it completely disappeared in the course of evolution.
However, since 1875, records of fabella began to appear more and more in medical readings. It is assumed that with the advent of the industrial age, people became taller and heavier, so they had a large calf muscle. Fabella, which is located in the calf tendon, helps the tendon slide smoothly and relieves tension from the muscle.
This bone, by the way, is present in the skeletons of dogs, cats and some monkeys.