Maxillary Finestra

[MarkGelbart]

While I was researching this week's entry for my blog, I learned something new.

All tyrannosaurs have a hole in their skull below the eye socket. It's called the maxillary finestra and it varies in size and shape among the different species of tyrannosaur.



I thought this was pretty neat.

The image is from an article entitled "A new Genus of Tyrannosauroid from the Late Cretaceous (Middle Campanian) Demopolis Formation of Alabama" by Thomas Carr, et. al. in JVP March 2005

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"fenestra" is the latin word for "window". although animals ideally would all have hugely strong bone structures, for many "parts" of many animals, they need some structurally cool lightening adaptations so that the parts can be moved rapidly and not weigh too much. always a trade-off between strong and quick.