maxilla

The Maori and Moriori skeletal remains, including skulls without mandibles, craniums, loose mandibles and maxilla fragments, were largely collected by Austrian taxidermist and grave robber Andreas Reischek from 1877 to 1889.

The skeletal remains, which include skulls without mandibles, craniums, loose mandibles and maxilla fragments, were handed over in an official ceremony in Vienna on Tuesday, where there was a panel and presentation.

“As her son grew, he began developing a sharp boyish face. To her, it evoked a primitive ax head, chipped from flint by, say, the Algonquin Indians. He had a small, round, aerodynamic cranium, like a cheetah. The front of his face — his nose, maxilla, sinuses, jaw — projected forward like a canine skull — what an anthropologist would call prognathous. His blond hair grew in a short, tight cap on his head, like Julius Caesar or Eminem. And he had freckles.”

By contrast, we see the upper jaw — the maxilla — as a fixed part of the skull that simply holds the upper teeth.

But the maxilla is actually a separate bone of its own.