superior mesenteric artery

Mesenteric artery that supplies the whole length of the small intestine except the superior part of the duodenum. It also supplies the cecum and the ascending part of the colon and about half the transverse part of the colon. It arises from the anterior surface of the aorta below the celiac artery at the level of the first lumbar vertebra. Every claim on this page comes from the Leumas anatomy graph and carries its source.

What the superior mesenteric artery is

Mesenteric artery that supplies the whole length of the small intestine except the superior part of the duodenum. It also supplies the cecum and the ascending part of the colon and about half the transverse part of the colon. It arises from the anterior surface of the aorta below the celiac artery at the level of the first lumbar vertebra. The atlas records it as a artery at the organ scale in the human body.

Where the superior mesenteric artery is

It sits within the cardiovascular system. Positioned deliberately as part of this species body plan.

What the superior mesenteric artery connects to

The atlas records 7 typed relationships for it, across 5 kinds of connection. part of abdominal aorta.

Supply and innervation

This dataset asserts no arterial supply, venous drainage or innervation for the superior mesenteric artery. 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 superior mesenteric arterial tree and arteria mesenterica superior. Searching any of those names reaches this page.

Source

Uberon multi-species anatomy ontology (Mungall et al.), CC BY 4.0. Term UBERON:0001182, version 2026-06-19, retrieved 2026-08-24. Licence: CC-BY-4.0.

• Part of: abdominal aorta.
• A kind of: systemic artery.
• Connected to: right colic artery.
• Supplies: ileum and jejunum.
• contains: ileal artery and inferior pancreaticoduodenal artery.

Questions

Where is the superior mesenteric artery?

It sits within the cardiovascular system. Positioned deliberately as part of this species body plan.

What does the superior mesenteric artery connect to?

Part of: abdominal aorta.

Is the superior mesenteric artery 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.