viscerocranium
visceral cranium

The other, lower part of the skull is the viscerocranium.

The viscerocranium (also splanchnocranium or facial skeleton) is formed by the bones supporting the face.

For details and the constituent bones, see human skull, neurocranium and viscerocranium.

Various sources provide different numbers for the count of constituent bones of the human neuro- and viscerocranium.

The adult human skull is said to consist of two categorical parts of different embryological origins: The neurocranium and the viscerocranium.

Results of univariate and multivariate analyses were used to find small differences in the dimensions of the viscerocranium of Librerian chimpanzees.

The facial skeleton, splanchnocranium or viscerocranium consists of a part of the skull that is derived from branchial arches.

Some textbooks make a strict distinction between bones of the neurocranium and viscerocranium, primarily based on the respective bones' embryological origins.

For all of these reasons, it may not be easy to reach agreement on an authoritative bone count for the neuro- and viscerocranium and the human skull.

Evolutionarily, the human neurocranium has turned from being (just) the back part to (also) being the upper part, because during the evolutionary expansion of the brain, the neurocranium has overgrown the viscerocranium.

It is classified as true HFH (THFH) with unilateral enlargement of the viscerocranium, and partial HFH (PHFH) in which not all structures are enlarged.

Instead, for the purposes of describing their anatomy and enumerating their bones, mammalian and human skulls are divided differently: They are deemed to consist of two categorical parts, the neurocranium and the viscerocranium.

The human skull is anatomically divided into two parts: the neurocranium formed by eight cranial bones which houses and protects the brain, and the facial skeleton (viscerocranium) composed of fourteen bones not including the three ossicles of the inner ear.