postcranium

English

Etymology

From post- +‎ cranium.

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -eɪniəm

Noun

postcranium (plural postcrania)

1. (paleontology) The portion of a vertebrate skeleton located caudal to the cranium (that is, in bipeds, inferior to it).
   • 1878, Proceedings of the United States National Museum, Smithsonian Institution Press, page 324:

     Upper half of postcranium with the cerebral plate concave in profile, inferior margin of cerebral plate raised and slightly prominent, lower part of postcranium more or less convex.

   • 1997, Debra K. Martin, Troubled Times: Violence and Warfare in the Past‎^[1], page 137:

     In contrast, in Bronze Age samples cranial traumas are concentrated in males (with 5 of 6 cases in this sample; sexed postcrania are too sparse to analyze), and both cranial and postcranial traumas in the Iron Age are more frequent among males.

   • 2013, Charlotte A Roberts, The Archaeology of Disease‎^[2]:

     However, King (1994) revealed four lead-shot balls with a skull with evidence of fracture from a post-Medieval cemetery at Glasgow Cathedral, Scotland, and Willey and Scott (1996) report six of ten skeletons from the Battle of the Little Bighorn with gunshot wounds to either the cranium or the postcranium.

Derived terms

• postcranial
• postcranially

Related terms

• pericranium

 

See also

• postcrania on Wikipedia.Wikipedia