March 6, 1915 
Canada 
Geological Survey 
Museum Bulletin No* 9* 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL SERIES, NO. 4. 
The Glenoid Fossa in the Skull of the Eskimo. 
By F. H. S. Knowles. 
The glenoid fossae in the human skull are concave depres- 
sions on the basal aspect of the temporal bones. Each fossa 
is divided into two parts by the Glaserian fissure; the anterior 
portion concave, smooth, and bounded in front by the eminentia 
articularis, serves for the articulation of the condyle of the lower 
jaw; the posterior portion, rough and bounded behind by the 
tympanic plate, serves for the reception of part of the parotid 
gland. It is with the anterior portion that I intend to deal, 
and my object in this paper is to show that in the skulls of those 
Eskimo who have existed under the primitive conditions of life 
habitual to their race, the surface for articulation with the man- 
dible is not deeply concave as in the skulls of modern highly 
civilized races, but tends on the whole to be shallow, and in 
many instances very remarkably so. I have examined numbers 
of skulls belonging to various primitive races and in many of them 
one can pick out crania presenting flattening of this fossa in a 
more or less marked degree. W. L. H. Duckworth in his “Studies 
in Anthropology,” page 107, notes in his description of some 
aboriginal Australian crania in the Cambridge University 
Museum: “It is here to be remarked that the glenoid fossae 
of this specimen (No. 2137) are very shallow and flattened, 
the flattening being most pronounced in the region of the an- 
