The temple is a latch where four skull bones fuse: the
frontal
Front may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Films
* ''The Front'' (1943 film), a 1943 Soviet drama film
* ''The Front'', 1976 film
Music
* The Front (band), an American rock band signed to Columbia Records and active in the 1980s and e ...
,
parietal,
temporal, and
sphenoid. It is located on the side of the
head behind the
eye between the forehead and the ear. The
temporal muscle
In anatomy, the temporalis muscle, also known as the temporal muscle, is one of the muscles of mastication (chewing). It is a broad, fan-shaped convergent muscle on each side of the head that fills the temporal fossa, superior to the zygomat ...
covers this area and is used during
mastication
Chewing or mastication is the process by which food is crushed and ground by teeth. It is the first step of digestion, and it increases the surface area of foods to allow a more efficient break down by enzymes. During the mastication process, th ...
.
Cladist
Cladistics (; ) is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups (" clades") based on hypotheses of most recent common ancestry. The evidence for hypothesized relationships is typically shared derived cha ...
s classify land
vertebrate
Vertebrates () comprise all animal taxa within the subphylum Vertebrata () ( chordates with backbones), including all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Vertebrates represent the overwhelming majority of the phylum Chordata, ...
s based on the presence of an
upper hole, a
lower hole,
both
Both may refer to:
Common English word
* ''both'', a determiner or indefinite pronoun denoting two of something
* ''both... and'', a correlative conjunction
People
* Both (surname)
Music
* The Both, an American musical duo consisting of ...
, or
neither
Neither is an English pronoun, adverb, and determiner signifying the absence of a choice in an either/or situation. Neither may also refer to:
* ''Neither'' (opera), the only opera by Morton Feldman
* "neither" (short story), a very short s ...
in the cover of
dermal bone
A dermal bone or investing bone or membrane bone is a bony structure derived from intramembranous ossification forming components of the vertebrate skeleton including much of the skull, jaws, gill covers, shoulder girdle and fin spines rays ( le ...
that formerly covered the
temporalis muscle
In anatomy, the temporalis muscle, also known as the temporal muscle, is one of the muscles of mastication (chewing). It is a broad, fan-shaped convergent muscle on each side of the head that fills the temporal fossa, superior to the zygomati ...
, whose origin is the temple and whose insertion is the
jaw
The jaw is any opposable articulated structure at the entrance of the mouth, typically used for grasping and manipulating food. The term ''jaws'' is also broadly applied to the whole of the structures constituting the vault of the mouth and serv ...
. The brain has a lobe called the
temporal lobe
The temporal lobe is one of the four Lobes of the brain, major lobes of the cerebral cortex in the brain of mammals. The temporal lobe is located beneath the lateral fissure on both cerebral hemispheres of the mammalian brain.
The temporal lobe ...
.
Etymology
The word "templar" as used in anatomy has a separate etymology from the other meaning of word ''temple'', meaning "place of worship". Both come from
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
, but the word for the place of worship comes from ', whereas the word for the part of the head comes from
Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal Register (sociolinguistics), registers of Latin spoken from the Crisis of the Roman Republic, Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve ...
*', modified from ', plural form ("both temples") of ', a word that meant both "time" and the part of the head. Due to the common source with the word for
time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
, the adjective for both is "temporal" (both "pertaining to time" and "pertaining to the anatomical temple").
Regarding the
temporalis muscle
In anatomy, the temporalis muscle, also known as the temporal muscle, is one of the muscles of mastication (chewing). It is a broad, fan-shaped convergent muscle on each side of the head that fills the temporal fossa, superior to the zygomati ...
: in English, this muscle’s name is the time muscle. As above, the word "temporalis" comes from the Latin word "" meaning "time". The muscle covers the temporal bone, or time bone, which received its name because the hair of the head covering this bone is often the first hair to turn gray during the aging process. Therefore, this region is the first to show the effects of aging.
[http://www.anatomyexpert.com/app/structure/5007/4/]
See also
*
Pterion
The pterion is the region where the frontal, parietal, temporal, and sphenoid bones join. It is located on the side of the skull, just behind the temple.
Structure
The pterion is located in the temporal fossa, approximately 2.6 cm beh ...
, the weakest part of the skull
References
External links
*
{{Authority control
Human head and neck
Vertebrate anatomy