vertebral artery

The first branch of the left and right subclavian arteries that merge to form the single midline basilar artery; branches of the vertebral arteries supply the musculature of the neck. Every claim on this page comes from the Leumas anatomy graph and carries its source.

What the vertebral artery is

The first branch of the left and right subclavian arteries that merge to form the single midline basilar artery; branches of the vertebral arteries supply the musculature of the neck. The atlas records it as a artery at the organ scale in the human body.

Where the vertebral artery is

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

What the vertebral artery connects to

The atlas records 8 typed relationships for it, across 6 kinds of connection. a kind of systemic artery.

Supply and innervation

This dataset asserts no arterial supply, venous drainage or innervation for the vertebral 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 arteria vertebralis and vertebral arteries. Searching any of those names reaches this page.

Source

Uberon multi-species anatomy ontology (Mungall et al.), CC BY 4.0. Term UBERON:0001535, version 2026-06-19, retrieved 2026-08-24. Licence: CC-BY-4.0.

• A kind of: systemic artery.
• Connected to: posterior spinal artery.
• Supplies: spinal cord.
• develops into: basilar artery, posterior inferior cerebellar artery and posterior spinal artery.
• contains: posterior inferior cerebellar artery.
• transports: transverse foramen of atlas.

Questions

Where is the vertebral artery?

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

What does the vertebral artery connect to?

A kind of: systemic artery.

Is the vertebral 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.