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| Temple | |
|---|---|
_(PSF).svg) Location of temple | |
.svg) Human skull.Temporal bone is orange, and the temple overlies the temporal bone as well as overlying thesphenoid bone. | |
| Details | |
| Artery | Superficial temporal artery |
| Vein | Superficial temporal vein |
| Identifiers | |
| Latin | tempus |
| TA98 | A01.1.00.004 |
| TA2 | 103 |
| FMA | 46450 |
| Anatomical terminology | |
Thetemple, also known as thepterion, is a latch where four skull bones intersect: thefrontal,parietal,temporal, andsphenoid.[1] It is located on the side of thehead behind theeye between the forehead and the ear. Thetemporal muscle covers this area and is used duringmastication.
Cladistics classify landvertebrates based on the presence of anupper hole, alower hole,both, orneither in the cover ofdermal bone that formerly covered thetemporalis muscle, whose origin is the temple and whose insertion is thejaw.
The word "temple" as used in anatomy has a separate etymology from the other meaning of wordtemple, meaning "place of worship". Both come fromLatin, but the word for the place of worship comes fromtemplum, whereas the word for the part of the head comes fromVulgar Latin *tempula, modified fromtempora, plural form ("both temples") oftempus, a word that refers both to "time" and to this part of the head. Due to its shared spelling (but not shared source) with the word fortime, the adjective for both is "temporal" (both "pertaining to time" and "pertaining to the anatomical temple").
This reference to time is related to the changes that this region of the head undergoes with the aging process, thus revealing the passage of time. Among these changes are thinning of the skin, the appearance of the first gray hairs, and a greater prominence of thesuperficial temporal artery, which becomes more visible as an individual ages.[citation needed][inconsistent]
The name of the temporalis muscle looks like a form of the Latin word "tempus" meaning "time",[2] but this is a coincidence and the two words do not come from the same root.[3]
Media related toTemple (anatomy) at Wikimedia Commons
