388 OSTEOLOGY AND CHAP. 
with numerous tubercles. The carnassial tooth is often, but 
by no means always, very much larger and especially longer 
than the rest of the molar and premolar series. It is less 
pronounced in some of the omnivorous Arctoidea. The skull of 
the Carnivora is longer in the more primitive types, such as the 
Canidae, and shorter in the more specialised Felidae. The orbit 
is hardly ever completely shut off by bone, though the postorbital 
process of the frontal sometimes approaches the corresponding 
upward process of the zygomatic arch. The palate, which is 
completely ossified, sometimes reaches back for some distance 
behind the teeth; it always extends as far as the last molar. 
The tympanic bulla is often very inflated, and if flatter, as in the 
Bears, is at any rate large and conspicuous. The lower jaw has 
Frc. 191.—A, Atlas of Dog. Ventral view. x4. B, Axis of Dog. Side view. x 3. 
0, Odontoid process ; pz, posterior zygapophysis ; s, spinous process ; sv, foramen 
for first spinal nerve; ¢, transverse process; v, vertebrarterial canal. (From 
Flower’s Osteology.) 
a high coronoid process, and the condyle is transversely elongated, 
this part of the bone being rolled into an almost cylindrical 
form; it fits very closely into the glenoid cavity, and the 
articulation is thereby very strict—an obvious advantage in a 
creature with so great a need for power of jaw. 
In the vertebral column the atlas always has large wing-like 
processes; the spine of the axis vertebra has a long antero- 
posteriorly elongated form. The transverse processes of the 
fourth to the sixth cervicals are, as a rule, double. These 
features, however, though characteristic of the Carnivora are not 
by any means distinctive. The true sacrum consists of but a 
single vertebra to which the ilia are attached; but at most two 
other vertebrae are fused with this. The clavicle is always small 
and sometimes quite rudimentary, or even absent. The spine of 
the scapula is well developed, and almost equally divides the 
