The snout. The wolf's head.
Bone is far too slow to change in one night. The face is a human skull under pressure.
A human skull under pressure
Anatomy · Craniofacial ligamentsCopperplate · LCAN · Plate II · Facial architecture
To a witness it is not quite a human face. To a comparative anatomist it is still a human face. Folklore saw the snarl.
Bone remodelling takes days to weeks. The shift lasts hours. The skeleton does not change. The shifted has a human skull whose contents are under considerable hydraulic pressure and whose craniofacial ligamentous attachments have been temporarily enzymatically loosened. Engorged pterygoids and masseters splay the zygomatic arches. The mandible displaces. Temporomandibular viscoelasticity drops, so gape increases. Temporalis, grossly swollen, pushes the thin temporal bone and supraorbital rim into a heavier brow.
These changes are real, visible, and reversible because they are enzymatic and hydraulic, not osseous. There is no wolf skull inside the myth. There is a human face being used as a pressure vessel. The snarl is architecture under load.
Ch. 5.3
Werewolves in Theory