The skull is a bony structure in the head of many animals that supports the structures of the face and forms a cavity for the brain.
The skull is composed of two parts: the cranium and the mandible. A skull without a mandible is only a cranium. Animals that have skulls are called craniates. The skull is a part of the skeleton.
Functions of the skull include protection of the brain, fixing the distance between the eyes to allow stereoscopic vision, and fixing the position of the ears to help the brain use auditory cues to judge direction and distance of sounds. In some animals, the skull also has a defensive function (e.g. horned ungulates); the frontal bone is where horns are mounted.
The English word "skull" is probably derived from Old Norse "skalli" meaning bald, while the Latin word cranium comes from the Greek root κρανίον (kranion).
The skull is made of flat bones. The human skull is usually 7 mm thick
Read more about Skull: Fish Skulls, Tetrapod Skulls, Fenestrae, Human Skull, Bones, Terminology, Gallery
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... On February 25, 1866, miners found a human skull in a mine, beneath a layer of lava, 130 feet (40 m) below the surface of the earth, which made it into the ... A year before the skull came to his attention, Whitney had published the aforementioned belief of humans, mastodons, and elephants having coexisted and the skull only served as proof of his convictions ... In 1869 a San Francisco newspaper reported that a miner had told a minister that the skull was planted as a practical joke ...
... The Hofmeyr Skull is a specimen of a 37,000 year old human skull found in 1952 ... It is one of the very few modern human skulls discovered in Africa south of Ethiopia and older than 20,000 years ...
Famous quotes containing the word skull:
“O I shall hear skull skull,
Hear your lame music,
Believe music rejects undertaking,
Limps back.”
—Owen Dodson (b. 1914)
“The affirmative class monopolize the homage of mankind. They originate and execute all the great feats. What a force was coiled up in the skull of Napoleon!”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I don’t have to pound on that thick skull of yours and make big speeches as to what this mission means to us. I think you know. If you do good, it means the lives of several thousand men, so do good.”
—Alvah Bessie, Ranald MacDougall, Lester Cole, and Raoul Walsh. Col. Carter, Objective Burma, giving a subaltern a mission (1945)