patella

A large sesamoid bone found in the distal femur/proximal tibial region of the hindlimb of tetrapods. The patella is the attachment site for proximal hindlimb tendons.[PHENOSCAPE:ad]. Every claim on this page comes from the Leumas anatomy graph and carries its source.

What the patella is

A large sesamoid bone found in the distal femur/proximal tibial region of the hindlimb of tetrapods. The patella is the attachment site for proximal hindlimb tendons.[PHENOSCAPE:ad]. The atlas records it as a bone at the organ scale in the human body.

Where the patella is

It sits in the lower limb, within the skeletal system. Positioned deliberately as part of this species body plan.

What the patella connects to

The atlas records 12 typed relationships for it, across 6 kinds of connection. part of appendicular skeleton, hindlimb skeleton and knee.

Supply and innervation

This dataset asserts no arterial supply, venous drainage or innervation for the patella. 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 knee bone, knee cap and patella. Searching any of those names reaches this page.

Source

Uberon multi-species anatomy ontology (Mungall et al.), CC BY 4.0. Term UBERON:0002446, version 2026-06-19, retrieved 2026-08-24. Licence: CC-BY-4.0.

Questions

Where is the patella?

It sits in the lower limb, within the skeletal system. Positioned deliberately as part of this species body plan.

What does the patella connect to?

Part of: appendicular skeleton, hindlimb skeleton and knee.

Is the patella 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.