A bone of the outer part of the ethmoid bone complex in the skull, particularly found in some fish and other vertebrates.
From Greek 'ekto-' (outer) + 'ethmoid' (sieve-like bone, from 'ethmios' sieve-like). This anatomical term describes specific bony elements in the nasal region that comparative anatomists identify across different vertebrate species.
The ectoethmoid bone appears in fish but not in mammals like us—studying which bones appear and disappear across evolution tells us which ancestors we inherited from.
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