Monday June 20, 2022
The Nation Thailand —
The human middle ear—which houses three tiny, vibrating bones—is key to transporting sound vibrations into the inner ear, where they become nerve impulses that allow us to hear.
Chinese scientists have eventually found clues to the mystery in fossils unearthed in the provinces of Zhejiang and Yunnan, which provided anatomical and fossil evidence for the origin of vertebrate spiracles from gills.
According to Gai Zhikun, a Chinese Academy of Sciences researcher and the first author of the article “The Evolution of the Spiracular Region From Jawless Fish to Tetrapods,” there is ample embryonic and fossil evidence that the human middle ear evolved from a fish’s spiracle.
“The discovery of these ancient fish fossils is proof that our middle ears originated from fish gills. It explains why human ears don’t breathe today, but they’re still connected to the mouth, because they used to be the organ of fish’s respiratory system,” said Gai.