Anatomy Terms

Sometimes the words we end up using in Anatomy bother me.

Some of them are not descriptive, which bugs me. For example, the accessory pancreatic duct in the dog is the primary route by which pancreatic secretions reach the jejunum. The pancreatic duct may not even be present. (That varies from dog to dog.)

Some of them are overly descriptive. For example, the perforating branch of metatarsal II. This would make sense if there were other branches that perforated the foot... but, there's only the one artery. Too much information!

Then, we just use some of the same words over and over and over. For example, there are 3 (!) zygomatic processes in the skull. The zygomatic process of the maxillary bone, the zygomatic process of the temporal bone (both of which join the zygomatic bone to form the zygomatic arch) and the zygomatic process of the frontal bone (which points off the frontal bone toward the zygomatic arch... which has a frontal process of the zygomatic bone.)

Anyway, I think the terminology is ridiculous sometimes!