"Now Hear This: New Fossils Reveal Early Ear-Bone" Topic

… Evolution.

"Three bones—among the tiniest in the human body—sit in your middle ear, where they transmit vibrations from the eardrum to the cochlea, significantly sharpening your hearing. Collectively known as the auditory ossicles, they are unique to mammals. Reptiles and birds all have only one middle-ear bone—the bones that would otherwise be their "ossicles" are instead fused with the joints of their jaw. Despite their size, the ossicles are such a potent evolutionary innovation that they emerged independently multiple times in mammals—not only because of the resulting boost to hearing but also because their detachment from the jaw freed those animals to adapt to a wider variety of food sources. Without ossicles, ancient mammals might have been merely dinner for larger predators—or died off from starvation—rather than becoming our distant ancestors. In some sense, the emergence of the ossicle may have increased the odds of our being here. And now, according to a study published Thursday in Science, the long-sought fossil evidence of the first step in this epochal evolutionary pathway has been found…"
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