| Abstract: | Many accounts of the human premaxilla describe its ossification centers and time of fusion with the maxilla, but that such a bone even exists in the human has long been questioned. Very few specimens undergoing initial phases of ossification have been reported and no convincing photographs of separate centers have been published. This report is based on 90 serially sectioned human embryos whose ages (Streeter's Horizons XVIII to XXIII) were closely grouped around the age when ossification of the upper jaw begins. There is but one ossification center bilaterally which, although it appears first in the cuspid region, rapidly involves an area extending from the molar to the central incisor region. Not one of the specimens showed an independent center for the “premaxilla” nor an “incisive suture” in the area of ossification. The premaxilla does not exist as an independent bone in man. |
