Important Skull Clarification

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

10:24 AM

You masticate with your maxilla.

It is where your top cheek teeth
are! Your premaxilla comes
before your maxillia and contains
your incisors and canines if the
mammal you are looking at has
them!

Don't let the lacrimal

bone bring you to tears!
Some keys ask for
lacrimal areas and some
mammals have
fenestrations here! A tear
duct is a lacrimal duct so
anytime you see the word
think near the eyes!

LOOK! Last
molar LARGEST
in bears

Luh! You Park in

the Pterygoid
region. Sometimes
it’s a size thing on
HUGE mastoid processess the best keys
way to find the mastoid is to look
adjacent to the paroccipital processes
(sticking off from the hole where
your spinal cord goes in) and at the
posterior margins of the auditory
bullae

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 Check out the massive post
Orbital process of the Coypu!

The paraocciptial process is para to the occipital region

NERD Mnemonic:

Ok a lot of things have kickstands BUT distinguish everything else from a marsupial...and in a
MARSUPIAL the kickstand is made from the MASTOID Process NOT the Paraoccipital...note
the diff (the wombat/kangaroo/opossum) by checking if it meets the big 3 marsupial traits:

Mastoid process
Holes in palate
Inflected condyle

See below:

MASTOID
NOT Paraoccipital
This projection is
just NOT para to the
occipital plate

Marsupial vs Raccoon
See the difference this is para occipital Holes in palate
The inward curving is what
Note that in marsupials the auditory bulla are is meant by jaw inflection
formed by the alspheniod bone

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THE Infamous alsphenoid canal...it's in carnivores...at least some of them!

Note: I was wrong when I

said that the cat skull had an
alsphenoid canal...they do
NOT no felines do. When
you hold the cat skull like a
bowling ball the thing you
are covering with your
thumb is the optic canal
which I am pretty sure most
things will have because it
has to do with optic nerves.

HOWEVER, if there are 2

canals present (look for an
entry and an exit) the lower
of the two (when holding
Park HERE the skull like a bowling
ball) should be the
alsphenoid. From what I
have read it appears to be a
trait to distinguish groups of
carnivores. (This is a dog
skull)
You can turn the skull on its side, park in the pterygoid region and move your finger on a
diagnal in the direction of the orbit to find the alsphenoid canal if present.

To check this look to see if there is another canal near by if so it is the optic.

Summary
1 canal (2 hole entry/exit) = probably no alsphenoid and just optic canal
2 canals (2 hole entry/exit total 4 holes in same vicinity) = the lower canal is alsphenoid
(closest to the pterygoid region) while the upper is the optic

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