Brow ridge
bony ridge located above the eye sockets of all primates

The brow ridge, or supraorbital ridge known as superciliary arch in medicine, is a bony ridge located above the eye sockets of all primates and some other animals. In humans, the eyebrows are located on their lower margin.
Structure
The brow ridge is a nodule or crest of bone situated on the frontal bone of the skull. It forms the separation between the forehead portion itself (the squama frontalis) and the roof of the eye sockets (the pars orbitalis). Normally, in humans, the ridges arch over each eye, offering mechanical protection. In other primates, the ridge is usually continuous and often straight rather than arched. The ridges are separated from the frontal eminences by a shallow groove. The ridges are most prominent medially, and are joined to one another by a smooth elevation named the glabella.
Typically, the arches are more prominent in men than in women, and vary between different human populations. Behind the ridges, deeper in the bone, are the frontal sinuses.
“Brow ridge” enters the record as bony ridge located above the eye sockets of all primates. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Brow, ridge and bony can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Brow ridge” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.