Answer
The skull includes the cranium -- the box that contains the brain-- and the face bones . The cranium comprises 8 bones and there are 14 face bones. The skull, therefore, is composed of a total of 22 bones in the adult.
Work Step by Step
Sutures are the immovable joints that connect the bones of the skull. In the young these fibrous cartilaginous connections are more flexible and this allows slightly more movement (give) between skull bones. But in adults the connections hardened and ossify to form what are called sutures ( suture joints). When ossification takes place early in development the two parts of an embryonic bone may solidify into one bone;this is the case with the mandible. In the case of the parietal bones, we still speak of a pair of parietal bones-- the hardening of the sutures, notwithstanding.
