pastern
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Within Vinony's link graph, pastern is referenced by 89 other articles, and connects out to Latin, horse and International Standard Book Number.
It is catalogued under topics including Dog anatomy and Horse anatomy.
Its subject is documented across 5 Wikipedia language editions.
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- gross anatomy
- Subclass of
- joint
Show 1 more fact
- native label
- Pāstōrius
via Wikidata · CC0
~6 min read
Encyclopedic overview
8 sectionsContents
- Anatomy and importance
- Matching angles
- Conformation
- Long, sloping pasterns
- Short, upright pasterns
- See also
- References
- Further reading
The pastern is a part of the leg of a horse below the fetlock and above the hoof. It incorporates the long pastern bone (proximal phalanx) and the short pastern bone (middle phalanx), which are held together by two sets of paired ligaments to form the pastern joint (proximal interphalangeal joint). Anatomically homologous to the two largest bones found in the human finger, the pastern was famously mis-defined by Samuel Johnson in his dictionary as "the knee of a horse". When a lady asked Johnson how this had happened, he gave the much-quoted reply: "Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance."
==Anatomy and importance==
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “pastern” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.