gna·thal

(nā′thəl, năth′əl)

adj.

Gnathic.

[Greek gnathos, jaw; see genu- in Indo-European roots + -al.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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References in periodicals archive

The blades, called gnathal plates, looked so peculiar that most scientists thought that the three-part jaw originated in an early bony fish and that placoderms were just a side branch in the vertebrate family tree.

Fossil find revises history of jaws: placoderms may be ancestors of bony fish, land vertebrates

In other, more derived crustacean lineages, the most anterior thoracic segments are transformed into maxillipeds - supplementary feeding appendages that resemble in part the gnathal segments.

Hox genes in arthropod development and evolution

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