Anatomical Features of the Basioccipital Bone including the Transverse Basilar Cleft, Clival Foramen, Clival Canal, Foveae, and Foveolae

Abstract

The basioccipital bone is particularly important with regard to the developing cranium. There is broad anatomical diversity in the anatomy of fetal and infantile basioccipitals. Specifically, some basioccipitals have transverse basilar clefts, clival foramina, and clival canals. Additionally, basioccipitals are diverse with regard to foveae and foveolae patterns. The size and shape of the basioccipital also changes throughout development. Canonical variate analysis revealed shape change from a relatively narrow/long with mild concavity at the foramen magnum in the 5th and 6th intrauterine months to relatively broad/short with more pronounced concavity in the 5th postnatal month. This report highlights the development of the basioccipital bone in addition to detailing the prevalence of the aforementioned anatomical features of the basioccipital and discusses the implications for anthropology, forensic osteology, as well as clinical implications of variant basioccipital anatomy.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.

Ontogeny of the human fetal, neonatal, and infantile basioccipital bone: Traditional and extended eigenshape geometric morphometric analysis

“…The authors would also like to thank, Lyman M. Jellema, Collections Manager of the Johns Hopkins Fetal Cranial Collection. This work was presented, in part, at the 2019 American Association for Anatomy Annual Meeting at the Experimental Biology Conference (USA) (French et al, 2019).…”