Morphological study of various shapes of coronoid process of known sex in dry human mandible in Saurashtra region

Abstract               The mandible, the largest and strongest bone of the face, serves for the reception of the lower teeth. It consists of a curved, horizontal portion, the body, and two perpendicular portions, the rami, which unite with the ends of the body nearly at right angles¹.The coronoid process of the mandible is anterior projection process gives attachment of muscles of mastication. This study was done to identify various shapes of coronoid process of dry human mandible in Saurashtra region in reference to gender without considering age. The material for this study comprised of 131 (262 sides) dry human mandibles out of which 79 are male (158 sides) and 52 are female (104 sides) from the osteology bank of Anatomy Department, M P Shah Govt. Medical College, Jamnagar, Gujarat, India. We observe three different variants of coronoid process namely triangular, rounded and hook shaped. We got 64.56% and 32.69% of triangular shaped, 12.66% and 28.85% of hook shaped and 22.78% and 38.46% of rounded shaped in male and female mandibles respectively. This study of shape of coronoid process will be beneficial for the Anthropologists, Forensic scientists and Reconstructive surgeons

Key Word:Mandible, Coronoid process, Triangular, Rounded, Hook