Bone · Head

Palatine

Os palatinum

An L-shaped bone, one on each side, tucked out of sight between the upper jaw in front and the wing-plates of the sphenoid behind. Its horizontal arm forms the back third of the hard palate, meeting its opposite number at the midline — the roof of the mouth on one surface, the floor of the nose on the other. Its vertical arm climbs the side wall of the nasal cavity and contributes a small square to the floor of the eye socket, so a single small bone appears in the mouth, the nose and the orbit. You can feel the structure it completes by running your tongue backwards along the hard roof of the mouth until it turns soft, but you can never see this bone from outside the skull.