The first animals on the earth breathed with ears

Swedish studies on fossils of a fish that lived 370 million years ago have shown that hearing organs also grow as respiratory organs.

Per Ahlberg of Uppsala University, north of Stockholm, said: "Fossils have shown how an ear develops in a complex sequence and is linked to respiration."

To find out how the ear grows on the first animals of the world, Mr. Ahlberg and his colleague Martin Brazeau studied the hearing organs on fossils of prehistoric fish species named Panderichthys.

He explained that Panderichthys is an animal close to the earth's animals among all the fossils of the fish we have studied.

On the fossil skeleton of this fish, there is an ear-like part, but it is not an ear.

He emphasized: It is obviously not an ear because it has no connection to the internal auditory structure. If you look at the first reptiles, you will see that their ears are similar to Panderichthys ears and it seems that there is no appearance of the eardrums, so they can breathe with the ears.

According to him, for the first animals on earth, respiratory function still exists but hearing function has begun to develop.