Author
Listed:
- Jin Meng
(American Museum of Natural History
Key Laboratory of Evolutionary Systematics of Vertebrates, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 643)
- Yuanqing Wang
(Key Laboratory of Evolutionary Systematics of Vertebrates, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 643)
- Chuankui Li
(Key Laboratory of Evolutionary Systematics of Vertebrates, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 643)
Abstract
The transference of post-dentary jaw elements to the cranium of mammals as auditory ossicles is one of the central topics in evolutionary biology of vertebrates. Homologies of these bones among jawed vertebrates have long been demonstrated by developmental studies; but fossils illuminating this critical transference are sparse and often ambiguous. Here we report the first unambiguous ectotympanic (angular), malleus (articular and prearticular) and incus (quadrate) of an Early Cretaceous eutriconodont mammal from the Jehol Biota, Liaoning, China. The ectotympanic and malleus have lost their direct contact with the dentary bone but still connect the ossified Meckel’s cartilage (OMC); we hypothesize that the OMC serves as a stabilizing mechanism bridging the dentary and the detached ossicles during mammalian evolution. This transitional mammalian middle ear narrows the morphological gap between the mandibular middle ear in basal mammaliaforms and the definitive mammalian middle ear (DMME) of extant mammals; it reveals complex changes contributing to the detachment of ear ossicles during mammalian evolution.
Suggested Citation
Jin Meng & Yuanqing Wang & Chuankui Li, 2011.
"Transitional mammalian middle ear from a new Cretaceous Jehol eutriconodont,"
Nature, Nature, vol. 472(7342), pages 181-185, April.
Handle:
RePEc:nat:nature:v:472:y:2011:i:7342:d:10.1038_nature09921
DOI: 10.1038/nature09921
Download full text from publisher
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:472:y:2011:i:7342:d:10.1038_nature09921. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.