culmen

Borrowed from Latin culmen (“apex, acme”).

culmen (plural culmens or culmina)

Top; summit.
Synonyms: top, summit, acme; see also Thesaurus:summit
- 1681, Balm from Gilead:
  the Shibboleth and Culmen of Honesty
(zoology) The dorsal ridge of a bird's bill.
- 1997 June 20, “A Role for Ecotones in Generating Rainforest Biodiversity”, in Science‎, volume 276, number 5320, →DOI, pages 1855–1857:
  The measurements were taken as follows: wing length, from the carpal joint to the tip of the longest primary; tarsus length, from the tibiotarsal joint to the distal undivided scute; upper mandible length, the chord length from the point where the culmen enters the feathers of the head to the tip; bill depth, in the vertical plane level at the anterior edge of the nares.
- 1910, Alfred M. Tozzer, Glover M. Allen, Animal Figures in the Maya Codices‎:
  A very simple form was found in the carving shown in Pl. 17, fig. 13, where a long projecting knob is seen at the base of the culmen.

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