Some of our bones are easy to see. The zygomatic bones that give our cheeks shape, the delicate phalanges of our fingers, and the bony bulbs that are our kneecaps all stand out from beneath the flesh.

But the hyoid matters for more than manners. As a sort of structural scaffold for the conduit between mouth and esophagus, this small-but-mighty bone shuttles food that’s already been partially broken ...

The 165-million-year-old fossil of a tiny, shrew-like animal shows the earliest example of modern hyoid bones—the ones that provide the ability to swallow food—in mammal evolution. The hyoid bones of ...

Skull, Mandible and Hyoid Bone of a Red Howler Monkey (IMAGE) Cell Press Caption This photo is of a skull, mandible and hyoid bone of a red howler monkey, showing the enormous size of the hyoid ...