In accordance with this manner of feeding, the mouth is kept permanently open and prevented from collapsing by a pair of skeletal cornua belonging to a sustentacular apparatus (the nuchal skeleton), the body of which lies within the narrow neck of the proboscis; the latter is inserted into the collar and surrounded by the anterior free flap of this segment of the body.

The nuchal skeleton is a non-cellular laminated thickening of basement-membrane underlying that portion of the stomochord which lies between the above-mentioned pouches and the orifice into the throat.

sk, body of nuchal skeleton.

Here the sexes also differ in coloration, the males having the head and breast black, and the females the same parts chestnut; but all have a yellow nuchal crescent (whence the name of the group).

Intrauterine lethality of trisomy 21 fetuses with increased nuchal translucency thickness.