Surfaces
The lateral surface is flat and marked by oblique ridges at its lower part; it gives attachment throughout nearly the whole of its extent to the masseter.
The medial surface presents about its center the oblique mandibular foramen, for the entrance of the inferior alveolar vessels and nerve.
The margin of this opening is irregular; it presents in front a prominent ridge, surmounted by a sharp spine, the lingula mandibulae, which gives attachment to the sphenomandibular ligament; at its lower and back part is a notch from which the mylohyoid groove runs obliquely downward and forward, and lodges the mylohyoid vessels and nerve.
Behind this groove is a rough surface, for the insertion of the internal pterygoid muscle (Pterygoideus internus). The mandibular canal runs obliquely downward and forward in the ramus, and then horizontally forward in the body, where it is placed under the alveoli and communicates with them by small openings.
On arriving at the incisor teeth, it turns back to communicate with the mental foramen, giving off two small canals which run to the cavities containing the incisor teeth.
In the posterior two-thirds of the bone the canal is situated nearer the internal surface of the mandible; and in the anterior third, nearer its external surface.
It contains the inferior alveolar vessels and nerve, from which branches are distributed to the teeth.
Read more about this topic: Ramus Of The Mandible
Famous quotes containing the word surfaces:
“But ice-crunching and loud gum-chewing, together with drumming on tables, and whistling the same tune seventy times in succession, because they indicate an indifference on the part of the perpetrator to the rest of the world in general, are not only registered on the delicate surfaces of the brain but eat little holes in it until it finally collapses or blows up.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“Footnotes are the finer-suckered surfaces that allow tentacular paragraphs to hold fast to the wider reality of the library.”
—Nicholson Baker (b. 1957)