We looked at the facial portion
of the human skull earlier. Today we’ll look at the occiput and palate (Fig. 1).
Figure 1. Human occiput and palate. On most tetrapods these two are usually set at right angles to each other, but an upright stance has rotated the occiput to a ventral orientation.
There’s nothing new here.
This is just an opportunity to educate myself on the human palate and occiput. Only the endotympanic (En) is a novel ossification. The occiput is a single bone here, the product of the fusion of several occipital bones. Can you find the suborbital fenestra? It’s pretty small here.
The asymmetry is interesting here.
Sure, this is an old adult, missing some teeth, but you’ll see other examples elsewhere.
Let me know
if you see any errors and they will be corrected. As you already know, everything I present here was learned only 48 hours earlier — or less.
