incus bone

The incus or anvil is the anvil-shaped small bone or ossicle in the middle ear. It connects the malleus to the stapes. It was first described by Alessandro Achillin of Bologna. The incus transmits sound vibrations from the malleus to the stapes. The incus only exists in mammals, and is derived from a reptilian upper jaw bone, the quadrate bone. Embryologically it is derived from the first pharyngeal arch along with the rest of the bones of mastication, such as the maxilla and mandible. [WP,unvetted]. Every claim on this page comes from the Leumas anatomy graph and carries its source.

What the incus bone is

The incus or anvil is the anvil-shaped small bone or ossicle in the middle ear. It connects the malleus to the stapes. It was first described by Alessandro Achillin of Bologna. The incus transmits sound vibrations from the malleus to the stapes. The incus only exists in mammals, and is derived from a reptilian upper jaw bone, the quadrate bone. Embryologically it is derived from the first pharyngeal arch along with the rest of the bones of mastication, such as the maxilla and mandible. [WP,unvetted]. The atlas records it as a bone at the organ scale in the human body.

Where the incus bone is

It sits in the head, within the skeletal and sensory systems. Positioned deliberately as part of this species body plan.

What the incus bone connects to

The atlas records 7 typed relationships for it, across 4 kinds of connection. part of middle ear and splanchnocranium.

Supply and innervation

This dataset asserts no arterial supply, venous drainage or innervation for the incus bone. Only a minority of structures carry those edges here, so an empty answer means nothing has been recorded — not that there is nothing to record.

Also called

Also recorded as quadrate - incus, incus and incus bone. Searching any of those names reaches this page.

Source

Uberon multi-species anatomy ontology (Mungall et al.), CC BY 4.0. Term UBERON:0001688, version 2026-06-19, retrieved 2026-08-24. Licence: CC-BY-4.0.

• Part of: middle ear and splanchnocranium.
• A kind of: auditory ossicle bone, endochondral bone and skeletal element.
• composed of: bone tissue.
• contains: lenticular process of incus bone.

Questions

Where is the incus bone?

It sits in the head, within the skeletal and sensory systems. Positioned deliberately as part of this species body plan.

What does the incus bone connect to?

Part of: middle ear and splanchnocranium.

Is the incus bone the same in other species?

Leumas holds the same relationship vocabulary for every species it carries, so where another dataset records this structure you can put the two side by side on /compare.