New discovery about the middle ear of humans evolved from fish gills

Chinese scientists have finally found a clue to the mystery in fossils unearthed in Zhejiang and Yunnan provinces, providing anatomical and fossil evidence for the origin of snorkels in animals Vertebrates are from gills.

Illustration. (Source: livescience.com)

A new study by Chinese, Swedish and British scientists shows that the human middle ear evolved from fish gills .

According to researcher Gai Zhikun of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and first author of the paper "Evolution of the respiratory tract from jawless fish to tetrapods," there is a lot of evidence from embryonic and chemical The fossil shows that the human middle ear evolved from the spiracles of fish.

However, the origin of the stoma has baffled scholars for a century. The fossils were taken to Switzerland for scanning and 3D reconstruction of the structure.

Gai said the discovery helps explain why the human ear and mouth are connected, thanks to an airway passed down from the mouth to the gills of the fish.

This scientist explains that this is an evolutionary vestige of fish from more than 400 million years ago, which we now call the Eustachian tube (the tube connecting the middle ear and nasopharynx, responsible for balancing ear pressure and discharge excess fluid from the middle ear ).