It is characterized by a jutting lower jaw that is often accompanied by an abnormally thick lower lip and sometimes a tongue that is abnormally large.
Modern habsburg jaw.
The researchers led by geneticist román vilas from spain s.
The most salient indicator of the family s inbreeding the habsburg jaw is what doctors refer to as mandibular prognathism.
A new report at smithsonian takes a look back at one of the most distinctive features of a royal family that once ruled much of europe over the course of several centuries.
The researchers were interested in mandibular prognathism perhaps better known as the famous habsburg jaw this was a facial deformity that affected some of the habsburgs notably including king.
Prognathism also known as the habsburg jaw is a positional relationship of the mandible or maxilla to the skeletal base where either of the jaws protrudes beyond a predetermined imaginary line in the coronal plane of the skull.
This distinctive habsburg jaw a new analysis published in the annals of human biology finds most likely resulted from inbreeding.
Also called the habsburg lip and the austrian lip the habsburg jaw is a physical condition known by the modern term mandibular prognathism.