These bones have been markedly
reconfigured from the "normal" shapes and
positions such bones usually have.

The temples. In humans, thick bands of muscle pass beneath the zygomatic arch (cheekbone) to spread out in a fan shape and connect with the entire side of the skull. Hold your fingers to the side of your head and grimace to see how they attach from forehead to upper hairline to behind the ear. In the Starchild the zygomatic arch has been greatly reduced and dropped from horizontal to a 45-degree angle. Instead of two fingers worth of muscle passing through, two fat drinking straws pass through. And, in a true miracle of deformity, those greatly reduced muscles neatly reattach across an area about 1/3 that of a human.

The parietals. In humans the parietal bones form the upper rear of the cranium. A wide range of difference is possible in this part of the head, but the Starchild's parietals are far beyond any such variation. In fact, they are so large relative to human parietals, most experts take one look and proclaim that they must be the result of hydrocephaly, or water on the brain. This is highly misleading because there is also a very noticeable "crease" or depression along the suture that binds the two parietals together at the rear crown of the head. If upward pressure from cerebrospinal fluid had indeed distended the parietals, then surely it would not have left a crease between them. Here, too, we must question "expert" opinion because it was so often given and yet was so obviously wrong.

The occipital and neck. The occipital is a large curved bone covering the lower rear of a human head. Near its center is a noticeable bump (feel your own) called the "inion," the starting point for the neck. Above the inion is cranium, below it is neck. Neck attachments fan out in an arc that carries from the inion to behind and below the mastoid bones that protect the ear canals. It is an extensive area, in its own way as extensive as the attachment area of the temple muscles. And in all cases of head binding, none can go below the inion without damaging muscle. Yet, in the Starchild skull the entire occipital is flat, as if designed that way, with a gently convoluted surface that belies any chance of binding--ever.

Furthermore, the inion has become subtly concave relative to the bone around it. And, as with the temple muscles, the neck muscles have somehow been greatly reduced in size and reconfigured in a semicircle roughly 1/3 the area of a human neck.