cranial kinesis

Some of the bones may have allowed movement within the skull (cranial kinesis) as well.

The first example of cranial kinesis in the Chondricthyans, such as sharks.

Cranial kinesis, or lack thereof, is usually linked to feeding.

Ancestry also plays a role in limiting or enabling cranial kinesis.

Birds have varying degrees of cranial kinesis, with parrots exhibiting the greatest degree.

The snake skull shows the greatest degree of cranial kinesis, in order to allow the snake to swallow large prey items.

As a result, mammals show little or no cranial kinesis, and the mandible is attached to the temporal bone by the temporomandibular joints.

The cranial kinesis is also visible in the skull roof, between the parietal bones and the postparietal bones.

In amphibians, cranial kinesis varies, but is unknown in frogs and rare in salamanders.

Therefore, reduced cranial kinesis in basal living snakes may be a fossorial adaptation rather than the retention of a plesiomorphic trait.

Cranial kinesis is the term for significant movement of skull bones relative to each other in addition to movement at the joint between the upper and lower jaw.

Significant cranial kinesis is rare in mammals (the human skull shows no cranial kinesis at all).

Part II - Striges, Caprimulgiformes ed Apodiformes ["Cranial kinesis and morphology of non-passerine birds.

Batrachomorphs are distinguished by a number of features in the skeleton, including a flat or shallow skull, a fused skull roof with no cranial kinesis, exoccipital-postparietal contact on the occiput, and four or fewer fingers on the hand.

Among reptiles, crocodilians and turtles lack cranial kinesis, while lizards possess some, often minor, degree of kinesis and snakes possessing the most exceptional cranial kinesis of any tetrapod.

Like all birds, the bills of sandpipers are capable of cranial kinesis, literally being able to move the bones of the skull (other than the obvious movement of the lower jaw) and specifically bending the upper jaw without opening the entire jaw, an act known as rhynchokinesis.