malleus bone

The malleus or hammer is a hammer-shaped small bone or ossicle of the middle ear which connects with the incus and is attached to the inner surface of the eardrum. The word is Latin for hammer. It transmits the sound vibrations from the eardrum to the incus. The malleus is unique to mammals, and evolved from a lower jaw bone in basal amniotes called the articular, which still forms part of the jaw joint in reptiles. 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 malleus bone is

The malleus or hammer is a hammer-shaped small bone or ossicle of the middle ear which connects with the incus and is attached to the inner surface of the eardrum. The word is Latin for hammer. It transmits the sound vibrations from the eardrum to the incus. The malleus is unique to mammals, and evolved from a lower jaw bone in basal amniotes called the articular, which still forms part of the jaw joint in reptiles. 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 malleus bone is

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

What the malleus bone connects to

The atlas records 17 typed relationships for it, across 7 kinds of connection. part of middle ear and splanchnocranium.

Supply and innervation

This dataset asserts no arterial supply, venous drainage or innervation for the malleus 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 anguloarticular - malleus and malleus. Searching any of those names reaches this page.

Source

Uberon multi-species anatomy ontology (Mungall et al.), CC BY 4.0. Term UBERON:0001689, version 2026-06-19, retrieved 2026-08-24. Licence: CC-BY-4.0.

• Part of: middle ear and splanchnocranium.
• A kind of: anatomical structure, auditory ossicle bone, endochondral bone and skeletal element.
• Attaches to: tensor tympani.
• contains: anterior process of malleus, lateral process of malleus, malleus head, malleus neck and manubrium of malleus.
• contributes to morphology of: malleus head, malleus neck and manubrium of malleus.
• composed of: bone tissue.
• Develops from: Meckel's cartilage.

Questions

Where is the malleus bone?

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

What does the malleus bone connect to?

Part of: middle ear and splanchnocranium.

Is the malleus 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.