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Home  »  Anatomy of the Human Body  »  pages 137

Henry Gray (1825–1861). Anatomy of the Human Body. 1918.

pages 137

The crest ends below in a small notch which is converted into a foramen, the foramen cecum, by articulation with the ethmoid. This foramen varies in size in different subjects, and is frequently impervious; when open, it transmits a vein from the nose to the superior sagittal sinus. On either side of the middle line the bone presents depressions for the convolutions of the brain, and numerous small furrows for the anterior branches of the middle meningeal vessels. Several small, irregular fossæ may also be seen on either side of the sagittal sulcus, for the reception of the arachnoid granulations.

Orbital or Horizontal Part (pars orbitalis).—This portion consists of two thin triangular plates, the orbital plates, which form the vaults of the orbits, and are separated from one another by a median gap, the ethmoidal notch.


FIG. 135– Frontal bone. Inner surface. (See enlarged image)

Surfaces.—The inferior surface (Fig. 135) of each orbital plate is smooth and concave, and presents, laterally, under cover of the zygomatic process, a shallow depression, the lacrimal fossa, for the lacrimal gland; near the nasal part is a depression, the fovea trochlearis, or occasionally a small trochlear spine, for the attachment of the cartilaginous pulley of the Obliquus oculi superior. The superior surface is convex, and marked by depressions for the convolutions of the frontal lobes of the brain, and faint grooves for the meningeal branches of the ethmoidal vessels.
  The ethmoidal notch separates the two orbital plates; it is quadrilateral, and filled, in the articulated skull, by the cribriform plate of the ethmoid. The margins of the notch present several half-cells which, when united with corresponding half-cells on the upper surface of the ethmoid, complete the ethmoidal air cells. Two grooves cross these edges transversely; they are converted into the anterior