The facial skeleton serves five core functions: it shapes your face, protects your sensory organs, anchors the muscles you use to chew and make expressions, conditions the air you breathe, and distributes mechanical forces across your skull. Made up of 15 bones (six paired and three unpaired), this structure does far more than give your face its contour.
Bones That Make Up the Facial Skeleton
The facial skeleton, sometimes called the viscerocranium, is distinct from the upper portion of the skull that encases your brain. It consists of 15 bones: six types that come in mirrored pairs (the maxillae, inferior nasal conchae, palatine bones, lacrimal bones, zygomatic bones, and nasal bones) and three singular bones (the mandible, vomer, and ethmoid). Together, these bones form the eye sockets, nasal cavity, oral cavity, and the visible contours of your cheeks, nose, chin, and jaw.
Protecting the Eyes, Nose, and Mouth
One of the facial skeleton’s most critical jobs is shielding the delicate organs packed into your face. The eye sockets, or orbits, are bony enclosures that house not just the eyeball but also the muscles that move it, the tear-producing glands, blood vessels, and the optic nerve. The walls of each orbit act as a physical barrier against blunt trauma, absorbing impacts that would otherwise damage your vision. Fractures severe enough to reach the canal carrying the optic nerve can cause blindness or dangerous bleeding, which gives a sense of how much protection these bones normally provide.
The nasal cavity is similarly enclosed by facial bones, with the nasal bones forming the bridge of the nose and the ethmoid and vomer dividing the interior into left and right passages. The palatine bones form the back portion of the hard palate, separating the nasal cavity from the mouth so you can breathe and eat simultaneously. The lacrimal bones, the smallest bones in the face, sit at the inner corner of each eye socket and house the tear drainage system.
Chewing and Force Distribution
Chewing generates a surprising amount of force, and the facial skeleton is engineered to handle it. The mandible (lower jaw) and maxillae (upper jaw) hold your teeth in place and serve as attachment points for the four primary chewing muscles: the temporalis, masseter, and the medial and lateral pterygoids. These muscles all attach to the mandible and work together to move your jaw up, down, side to side, and forward, grinding food before you swallow.
The forces produced during chewing don’t just stay in your jaw. They travel upward through a system of vertical and horizontal reinforcements called buttresses. Think of these as load-bearing columns and crossbeams built into the bone. The strongest of these runs along the cheekbone area and transfers the majority of chewing force from the upper jaw to the base of the skull. Other buttresses run along the nose and the back of the upper jaw. Horizontal buttresses act like cross-members, stabilizing the face side to side and front to back. This system is the reason your facial bones don’t buckle every time you bite into something hard.
Breathing and Air Conditioning
The interior of the nasal cavity contains curved, shelf-like structures called turbinates (or conchae). The inferior turbinate is the largest and is its own separate bone, while the middle and superior turbinates are extensions of the ethmoid bone. These scroll-shaped projections dramatically increase the surface area inside your nose.
That extra surface area serves a practical purpose. As air flows over the turbinates, it is warmed to body temperature, humidified, and filtered before reaching your lungs. The inferior turbinate handles the majority of airflow and can actually swell or shrink to regulate moisture levels inside the nasal cavity. Without this system, cold, dry, or particle-laden air would reach your lower airways largely unconditioned.
The facial skeleton also contains hollow spaces called sinuses, most notably the maxillary sinuses inside the cheekbones. These air-filled pockets reduce the overall weight of the skull, which would otherwise be far heavier given its size. The sinuses also enhance vocal resonance, contributing to the way your voice sounds when you speak.
Facial Expression and Communication
Your ability to smile, frown, squint, or raise an eyebrow depends on dozens of small muscles that originate directly from facial bones. The maxilla alone anchors muscles that flare your nostrils, lift your upper lip, and pull the corners of your mouth upward. The zygomatic bone (cheekbone) gives rise to both the major and minor muscles responsible for smiling. The mandible serves as the origin point for muscles that pull your lower lip down and create the chin-dimpling movement.
Even the small nasal bone and the thin lacrimal bone play roles. The muscle that wrinkles the bridge of your nose originates from the nasal bone, while the ring-shaped muscle that lets you squeeze your eyes shut attaches in part to the lacrimal bone at the inner eye socket. The facial skeleton essentially provides the scaffolding that makes human facial expression possible, which is central to nonverbal communication.
Passageways for Nerves and Blood Vessels
Scattered throughout the facial skeleton are small openings called foramina that allow nerves and blood vessels to pass between deeper structures and the surface of your face. These channels carry the nerve branches responsible for facial sensation (feeling a breeze on your cheek, pain from a toothache) and the blood supply that nourishes your skin, muscles, and teeth. The infraorbital foramen below the eye socket, for example, lets a major sensory nerve reach the skin of your mid-face. The mental foramen on the chin area of the mandible does the same for your lower lip and chin. Without these precisely placed openings, the tissues of your face would have no nerve supply or blood flow.
How the Facial Skeleton Changes With Age
The facial skeleton is not a fixed structure. Throughout adulthood, specific areas undergo gradual bone loss that contributes to visible aging. The midface is particularly susceptible: the maxilla loses projection over time, the rim of the eye socket resorbs (especially along the upper-inner and lower-outer edges), and the area around the nose opening widens. Along the jawline, bone loss concentrates in the prejowl region, contributing to jowling and a less defined chin.
This remodeling happens regardless of whether you have a full set of teeth, though losing teeth significantly accelerates bone loss in both the upper and lower jaws. The maxilla resorbs faster than the cheekbone, which is why the mid-face tends to flatten before the cheeks lose their prominence. These skeletal changes are a major, often underappreciated reason faces look different with age. Soft tissue sagging gets most of the attention, but the shrinking bony foundation underneath plays an equally important role.