File:Middle ear ossicles.png

A view from inside the tympanic cavity of Lagenorhynchus obliquidens (Pacific White-sided Dolphin)

This is a backlit view through the translucent floor of the ear trumpet (sulcus of mallear ridge).

M = malleus; I = incus; sp = sigmoid process; lta = lower tympanic aperture. The black dotted line indicates the anterior border of the sigmoid process. The black dashed line represents the ankylosed (fused) border between the malleus and the tympanic bone. The various colored dots represent locations where the thickness of the bone was measured. Red = 0.26 mm, Blue = 0.36 mm, Black = 0.43 mm; Green = 0.79 mm; Cyan = 0.89 mm. The scale bar represents 5 mm.

Reference: <pubmed>20694149</pubmed>

Copyright: © 2010 Cranford et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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