Tabular bone
Pair of triangular flat bones along the rear edge of the skull
The tabular bones are a pair of bones along the rear edge of the skull in many primitive tetrapods, often taking the form of a projecting "tabular horn", which formed part of the border of the otic notch. They served as attachment points for the neck muscles. While widely present in early tetrapods, they have been completely lost in all living tetrapod lineages, having been lost in the common ancestor of living reptiles and birds (Sauria), independently lost in caecilians (though present in the most primitive known caecilian Eocaecilia) and the common ancestor of salamanders and frogs (Batrachia), and the mammaliaform ancestors of living mammals.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Tabular bone”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Xenotosuchus skull roof.svg by Smokeybjb, CC BY-SA 3.0
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