American medical schools are afraid they won`t be able to get enough skeletons for their closets.

India, which had been the world`s largest supplier of skeletons, banned the exporting of human bones last summer amid reports that children were being killed for their skulls.

Most of the 127 medical schools in the United States appear to have adequate supplies of bones for now. But officials are concerned about finding replacements.

''It`s a big problem,'' said Dr. Michael Gershon, president of the Association of Anatomy Chairmen. ''The students won`t be as well-educated if they can`t get human bones.''

Plastic facsimiles are available. But educators say they lack the detail students need for a good understanding of bones and how they fit together.

''If we have to go to plastic we go to plastic,'' Gershon said. ''But they don`t look exactly like real ones. It`s almost impossible to make identical plastic ones.''

Plastic skeletons are passable for some uses, according to Scott Estey of Boston University School of Medicine. But skulls, which are especially important for training dental students, are virtually useless if made of plastic.

''Due to the fine structures in the skull it is extremely difficult to attempt to accurately reproduce it in plastic,'' Estey said.

India banned the exporting of skulls and skeletons for foreign medical colleges in August after reports of children being kidnaped and murdered for their skulls, chiefly in the eastern state of Bihar.

One report said 1,500 children per month were being kidnaped in Bihar and their skulls sent to Calcutta for exporting to 23 countries. Until the ban, India reportedly had met 80 percent of the world`s need for skulls and skeletons.

The embargo has already caused the price of the dwindling supplies of skeletons hanging in U.S. warehouses to jump from about $400 each to as high as $800 for a top-of-the-line model.

Once the remaining skeletons are sold, nothing but plastic will be available. ''There`s no other known source,'' said Dr. Raymond Flagg, vice president of Carolina Biological Supply Company in Burlington, N.C., which had been one of the nation`s largest suppliers of human bones.

Flagg said the sale of natural bones and skulls represented only a small percentage of his company`s business and he expected to make up for the lost sales by selling plastic models.

Natural skeletons last for years. But the bones are fragile and eventually have to be replaced after parts are lost or damaged through normal use.

''It`s nice to be able to give each student a box of bones so they can take them home and study them, said Gershon, chairman of the anatomy department at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

''There`s always a certain loss. They disappear. They lose them. They break them.''

Columbia, for example, buys an average of two new skeletons each year.

''If you go to an orthopedist who is supposed to be an expert on bones, you`d like to know he has been able to actually study real bones,'' Gershon said.

It`s illegal to sell any part of the human body in the United States. Most schools depend on people donating their bodies to allow students to learn anatomy through dissection. But most donors expect that, after dissection, their remains will buried.

''Many of these people feel they don`t want grandmama hanging in the closet somewhere at Harvard Medical School,'' said David Gunner, coordinator of anatomical gifts at Harvard. ''They want the remains to be interred.''

Gershon noted that even if donors could be persuaded to give permission for their bones to be preserved, no one in the United States is equipped to perform the delicate work needed to prepare the bones.

But Gershon said that if the embargo is not lifted, medical schools may eventually band together to fund a center to supply human skeletons to maintain the quality of education.

''There is not a medical school in the country that is worried about closing because of this,'' Gunner said. ''There are anatomists, however, who are worried about the quality of the material that will be able to use for teaching.''