Bone · Head

Temporal bone

Os temporale

The temporal bone forms the side and part of the base of the skull, around and above the ear. It houses the hearing and balance organs, and it provides the socket that the jaw hinges in. Two things make it matter in the clinic: the temporalis, one of the main chewing muscles, fans out from the shallow fossa above the ear, and the mastoid process — the hard knob behind the earlobe — is where the sternocleidomastoid anchors.