the.com/mandible
the only skull bone that moves, and it crushes with the force of a sledgehammer
means The lower jawbone, the hinged bone that holds your bottom teeth and does the heavy lifting of chewing and biting.
from From Latin 'mandibula,' meaning jaw, which comes from the verb 'mandere,' to chew — the same chewing root that, by way of 'chewing things over,' likely feeds into 'manducate' (to eat) and even gives French 'manger' its appetite. So the mandible is, quite literally, the chewing bone.
- bite force
- human jaw clamps at 200+ pounds of pressure
- lone mover
- only freely movable bone in your skull
- strongest bone
- hardest facial bone, yet most commonly fractured
- name origin
- from Latin mandere, meaning to chew
- baby halves
- two bones fused into one before age two
human mandible — the lower jawbone in humans, containing 16 teeth and the mental foramen
ant mandible — appendage used by ants like odontomachus to snap shut at 145 mph, the fastest movement in nature
crocodile mandible — lower jaw bone in saltwater crocodiles with bite force exceeding 3,700 psi