Bony Landmark Palpation - Temporal Bone (Skull)

you we're

gonna be palpating the temporal bone next so

temporal bone as a general is right in this area here

has quite a few other connections to bones that we're going to

be discussing kind of what bones are around it we won't go

in depth on too many kind of the sutures in this one because most of them

are not palpable but we are definitely pointing out a lot

of bony landmarks as we go through the temporal bone here

I'm going to start a little bit more towards the back

and try to find again a landmark

that we've watched previous videos on the skull the temporal

fossa so this is the temporal bone and the temporal fossa so

a very quick recap I won't go through everything in detail we have a frontal bone here we have parietal bone here and then it starts to drop down onto the temporal bone.

I'd like to point out that the temporal fossa goes behind the ear and it actually goes underneath the ear.

So if you're palpating superior posterior to the ear and you ask your body to clench their teeth a few times, you will quite easily feel temporalis moving in the temporal fossa through this location.

So temporal fossa technically is made up of four bones.

That was one, two, three, and then the fourth one is going to be the sphenoid bone, a little more anterior.

but this is often the temporal fossa gets

its name for temporalis and again that muscle so

that's going to be above the ear here i'm going to

turn the head slightly and kind of show you behind the ear

so as we pull the ear forward this

landmark right here is known as the mastoid process so it's quite easy for you to grab and a muscle that i'm kind of outlining right now is sternocleidomastoid

So that's going right up and inserting into this mastoid process. We also have two other muscles utilizing it as an attachment to.

So this is something you should definitely get to know. As I go kind of posterior to it, I'm going to point this out on the ear by pulling on our ear.

So this is going to get a little bit tricky. And let's see, waiting for the camera to zoom in a little bit.

But as I pull in, we're actually seeing a little bit of this fiber coming off the back of the ear.

I'll stress it a little bit. So this is known as your auricularis posterior.

It's a muscle that kind of pulls the ear back and it is originating depending on your source on something called the mastoid area or part.

So I'm just pointing that out that this is the process and a little bit more superior towards the occipital bone in here is the mastoid area or part.

So that's kind of directly in line this posterior auricularis muscle.

So sometimes that needs to be mentioned in reference.

okay I'm just going to lift up your ear a little bit if I go in front of this

mastoid process directly below the

ear I'm going to take some time I'm not going

to push too hard but underneath and in this location

is known as your styloid process so you have this small bony projection that's sticking down this is for your stylohyloid muscle so if you're wanting to confirm this one

You'd ask your person to swallow which is one of the main functions of the hyoids as a group as they help maneuver

The hyoid bone during swallowing So the styloid process tucked up underneath here

We're going to bring the head back to the neutral now We're not

sticking our fingers inside people's ears as much as you might like to But instead what we're going to do is we're going to find this little flap of skin

Some people will call this the tragus you might hear of a tragus piercing and I'm going to take that skin and I'm going to cover over top of her ear hole.

So the tragus and we cover it and the outer ear

hole has two names known as the external acoustic meatus or mitus or the external auditory,

AU auditory meatus so again instead of sticking

your finger inside and plugging it we're just taking this flap of skin and

covering over top of it so that's going to be again obviously

closing the ear hole for me that's an easy way to confirm

it instead of sticking an object inside just anterior to this tragus and the skin is going

to be the beginning of this zygomatic arch and there's a few more bony landmarks around this.

So again we'll come back and explain them kind of one by one but I'm going to start with the arch.

So the zygomatic bone which is the

cheekbone here is going to be projecting posteriorly towards the temporal and then the temporal is going to be kind of pushing forward and they kind of meet

somewhat in the middle right around this location at

their own suture point but this whole

area is called the zygomatic arch so

the temporal bone has what's known as a zygomatic

portion going forward and then the