Morphometric Study of Pterion in Dry Human Skull Bones of Nigerians

The pterion is an important landmark on the side of the skull as it overlies both the anterior branch of the middle meningeal artery and the lateral cerebral fissure intracranially. The study was carried out to determine the pterion types and define its distances to some neighboring structures in dry human skulls of Southern Nigerians. The study comprised 50 dry human skulls of unknown sex and age obtained from selected Nigerian Universities. Sutural patterns of the pterion on both sides of each skull based on the description of Murphy (1956), were observed and recorded. Distances of the pterion to neighboring structures were also measured using digital vernial caliper. Data obtained were subjected to statistical analysis using descriptive statistics and chi-square contingency table with the aid of the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 16. P