Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The lateral and medial pterygoid plates (of the pterygoid process of the sphenoid bone) diverge behind and enclose between them a V-shaped fossa, the pterygoid fossa. This fossa faces posteriorly, and contains the medial pterygoid muscle and the tensor veli palatini muscle.
The medial pterygoid plate (or medial pterygoid lamina) of the sphenoid bone is a horse-shoe shaped process that arises from its underside.. It is narrower and longer than the lateral pterygoid plate and curves lateralward at its lower extremity into a hook-like process, the pterygoid hamulus, around which the tendon of the tensor veli palatini glides.
The sphenoid bone of humans is homologous with a number of bones that are often separate in other animals, and have a somewhat complex arrangement. In the early lobe-finned fishes and tetrapods, the pterygoid bones were flat, wing-like bones forming the major part of the roof of the mouth. Above the pterygoids were the epipterygoid bones, which ...
The lateral surfaces of the body are united with the greater wings of the sphenoid and the medial pterygoid plates.. Above the attachment of each greater wing is a broad groove, curved something like the italic letter f; it lodges the internal carotid artery and the cavernous sinus, and is named the carotid sulcus.
The pterygoid canal (also vidian canal) is a passage in the sphenoid bone of the skull leading from just anterior to the foramen lacerum in the middle cranial fossa to the pterygopalatine fossa. [ 1 ]
In the pterygoid processes of the sphenoid, above the pterygoid fossa is a small, oval, shallow depression, the scaphoid fossa, which gives origin to the tensor veli palatini. It is not the same as and has to be distinguished from the scaphoid fossa of the external ear or pinna .
The greater wings of the sphenoid are two strong processes of bone, which arise from the sides of the body, and are curved upward, laterally, and backward; the posterior part of each projects as a triangular process that fits into the angle between the squamous and the petrous part of the temporal bone and presents at its apex a downward-directed process, the spine of sphenoid bone.
A human skull contains two pterygopalatine fossae—one on the left side, and another on the right side. Each fossa is a cone-shaped paired depression deep to the infratemporal fossa and posterior to the maxilla on each side of the skull, located between the pterygoid process and the maxillary tuberosity close to the apex of the orbit. [1]