Bone · Foot

1st metatarsal

The big toe's metatarsal: much the shortest and by far the thickest of the five, built to be loaded rather than to move quickly. Its base sits on the medial cuneiform and receives the tendons of tibialis anterior and fibularis longus nearby, and its head carries two grooves on the sole side, each occupied by a small sesamoid bone lying within the tendon of flexor hallucis brevis. Unlike the lesser metatarsals it has no ligament binding its base to its neighbour, so the first ray keeps some independent up-and-down movement.