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Recent Examples of maxillaThe jugal bone, or what could be called the cheekbone, and the maxilla, or jawbone, are fused, Bertozzo said.—Irene Wright, Miami Herald, 17 Sep. 2025 The Cook County Sheriff’s Office decided to reopen the Gacy file in 2011 as a cold case, exhuming bone fragments and sending eight sets of mandibles and maxilla to the CHI lab in Fort Worth for DNA processing.—David Montesino, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 25 Jan. 2024 Thomas' team looked at the maxilla, or the upper part of the dog's jaw, because those tooth roots are best for DNA sampling, and researchers were able to pull samples from three specimens.—Saleen Martin, USA TODAY, 12 Jan. 2023 Small skeletal details such as the shape of the upper jaw bone called the maxilla, the head of the thigh bone and the foot bones of Scleromochlus are similar to those of other reptiles proposed to be related to pterosaur origins.—Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 5 Oct. 2022 The front of his face — his nose, maxilla, sinuses, jaw — projected forward like a canine skull — what an anthropologist would call prognathous.—Dwight Garner, New York Times, 23 Aug. 2021 Later today, Garvey will operate on a man with a more difficult case—a large tumor in the maxilla, or top jaw—as part of two surgical teams.—Jacqueline Detwiler, Popular Mechanics, 1 Feb. 2020 Just feet away from where Bereino had found the maxilla, Haile-Selassie soon spotted what turned out to be most of the remaining skull.—Michael Greshko, National Geographic, 28 Aug. 2019
Recent Examples of Synonyms for maxilla
mandible
Noun
By March, crews found the mandible of an adult man, followed within days by the ribs of a young adult.
— Lucas Robinson, San Diego Union-Tribune, 22 Apr. 2026
His fingers splayed and writhed like a terrible mandible.