# What is the scapula?

The shoulder blade is called the scapula. Gray’s Anatomy (1918) describes it as follows: The scapula forms the posterior part of the shoulder girdle.

## What it means

- The scapula forms the posterior part of the shoulder girdle. It is a flat, triangular bone, with two surfaces, three borders, and three angles. Surfaces. —The costal or ventral surface presents a broad concavity, the subscapular fossa. The medial two-thirds of the fossa are marked by several oblique ridges, which run lateralward and upward. The ridges give attachment to the tendinous insertions, and the surfaces between them to the fleshy fibers, of the Subscapularis.
- The lateral third of the fossa is smooth and covered by the fibers of this muscle. The fossa is separated from the vertebral border by smooth triangular areas at the medial and inferior angles, and in the interval between these by a narrow ridge which is often deficient. These triangular areas and the intervening ridge afford attachment to the Serratus anterior.
- At the upper part of the fossa is a transverse depression, where the bone appears to be bent on itself along a line at right angles to and passing through the center of the glenoid cavity, forming a considerable angle, called the subscapular angle; this gives greater strength to the body of the bone by its arched form, while the summit of the arch serves to support the spine and acromion.
- The dorsal surface is arched from above downward, and is subdivided into two unequal parts by the spine; the portion above the spine is called the supraspinatous fossa, and that below it the infraspinatous fossa.

## Sources

- [Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body (1918)](https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/anatomy-of-the-human-body/6a-2-the-scapula-shoulder-blade/)

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