Gamal Mounir Allouch & Fahad Abdullah Alshanbari

A suture joint is a fibrous joint that does not move and are called fixed joints. The cranial joints of the skull are suture joints. The sutures of dog skull were viewed in dorsal, ventral, lateral-vertical and internal directions. The sutures of the dog skull are categorized into four groups: coronal, serrated, plane and squamosal sutures in different cranial positions. The current study aims to show the fibrous connections of the suture type in the stray dog and compare them with what is known about other domesticated dogs. We used 6 skulls of adult stray dog. The study found that the skull consists of nineteen bones — six single and 13 paired - most of which are connected by suture joints which is in agreement with previously reported studies of dog skull anatomy. However, the incisors and nasal bones are not connected in the stray dogs leading to the absence of a naos-maxillary-incisive notch. Other reports identified the maxilla articulates dorsally with the nasal bone and rostro-ventrally with the incisal bone to form a naos-maxillary-incisive notch, which has not been reported in other dog skull studies. Suture closure shows less closing in stray dogs in comparison to domestic dogs, but more closing than in wolves. This information is important to help veterinarians to distinguish sutures from fractures that may have occurred in the skull of dogs based on radiographs. The results of this study are also important for enriching comparative anatomy in different animal species.

KEY WORDS: Morphology; Skull; Sutures; Stray Dog; Pet Animal.

ALLOUCH,G.M. &ALSHANBARI,F.A. Morphologyandpatternstudyofcranialsuturejointsinadultstraydogs(Canisfamiliaris) from Saudi Arabia. Int. J. Morphol., 43(3):962-967, 2025.