Pterygoid Fossa on:
[Wikipedia]
[Google]
[Amazon]
The pterygoid fossa is an
anatomical
Anatomy () is the branch of morphology concerned with the study of the internal structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old scien ...
term for the fossa formed by the divergence of the lateral pterygoid plate and the medial pterygoid plate of the sphenoid bone
The sphenoid bone is an unpaired bone of the neurocranium. It is situated in the middle of the skull towards the front, in front of the basilar part of occipital bone, basilar part of the occipital bone. The sphenoid bone is one of the seven bon ...
.
Structure
The lateral and medial pterygoid plates (of the pterygoid process of thesphenoid bone
The sphenoid bone is an unpaired bone of the neurocranium. It is situated in the middle of the skull towards the front, in front of the basilar part of occipital bone, basilar part of the occipital bone. The sphenoid bone is one of the seven bon ...
) 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
The tensor veli palatini muscle (tensor palati or tensor muscle of the velum palatinum) is a thin, triangular muscle of the head that tenses the soft palate and opens the Eustachian tube to equalise pressure in the middle ear.
Structure
The te ...
muscle.
See also
* Pterygoid fovea *Scaphoid fossa
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
The tensor veli palatini muscle (tensor palati or tensor muscle of t ...
* Pterygoid process
References
Bones of the head and neck {{musculoskeletal-stub