Bone · Hand

Hamate

Os hamatum

The wedge-shaped bone at the little-finger corner of the distal row, distinguished by the hook — a curved process projecting from its palm-side surface, felt deep in the heel of the hand about a thumb's breadth beyond the pisiform. The hook forms the little-finger-side pillar of the carpal tunnel and gives attachment to the flexor retinaculum stretched across it; on its far side it makes the outer wall of a second, smaller passage through which the ulnar nerve and artery enter the palm. The body of the bone carries the bases of the fourth and fifth metacarpals.