Ethmoid bone
a bone in the skull separating the brain from the nasal cavity
The ethmoid bone (; from Ancient Greek: ἡθμός, romanized: hēthmós, lit. 'sieve') is an unpaired bone in the skull that separates the nasal cavity from the brain. It is located at the roof of the nose, between the two orbits. The cubical (cube-shaped) bone is lightweight due to a spongy construction. The ethmoid bone is one of the bones that make up the orbit of the eye.
Structure
The ethmoid bone is an anterior cranial bone located between the eyes. It contributes to the medial wall of the orbit, the nasal cavity, and the nasal septum. The ethmoid has three parts: cribriform plate, ethmoidal labyrinth, and perpendicular plate. The cribriform plate forms the roof of the nasal cavity and also contributes to formation of the anterior cranial fossa, the ethmoidal labyrinth consists of a large mass on either side of the perpendicular plate, and the perpendicular plate forms the superior two-thirds of the nasal septum. Between the orbital plate and the nasal conchae are the ethmoidal sinuses or ethmoidal air cells, which are a variable number of small cavities in the lateral mass of the ethmoid.
Articulations
The ethmoid articulates with thirteen bones:
two bones of the neurocranium—the frontal, and the sphenoid (at the sphenoidal body and at the sphenoidal conchae).
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16331. The Library of Congress control number is sh85033963. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ethmoid bone” 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.