Part of the human ear originates from the gills of fish

Fossils found in China provided the first anatomical and fossil evidence of a vertebrate jellyfish, a part of the middle ear of humans, originating from the gills of fish.

a middle ear It is the inner part of the eardrum and the outer part of the cochlea. Its function is to efficiently transfer sound energy from the air to the fluid inside the cochlea. Sound vibrations are transmitted to the inner ear, where they are converted into nerve impulses that allow us to hear.

Evidence indicates that humans have the middle ear It evolved from the spiracle of fish. However, the origin of the vertebrate blowhole has been a puzzle of vertebrate evolution, he writes Europa Press.

Some researchers in the 20th century, believing that the first vertebrates must have had complete spiral gills, searched for one between the mandibular and hyoid arches of the first vertebrates.

However, none of them have been found in a fossil of vertebrates. This would have been the case had it not been for a team of researchers from the Institute of Paleontology and Vertebrate Anthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. I have now found clues to this riddle At Galeaspida fossils in China.

Galeaspida is an extinct taxon of marine and jawless freshwater fish that lived in waters during the Silurian and Devonian periods, between 430 and 370 million years ago.

In the past 20 years, researchers have found two fossils: one from the brain of A ShuyuAnd the 438 million years, and first fossil galapsid 419 million years old.

The main author Gai Zhikun said in report.

“Many important structures of humans date back to our fish ancestors, such as teeth, jaws, middle ear, etc. The main task of paleontologists is to find important missing links in the evolutionary chain from fish to humans. Shuyu was considered A missing link is just as important Archeopteryx, Ichthyostega And the TiktaalikAnd the Zhou Min, co-author of the study.

The results of the recent study were published in the scientific journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.