{"id":105891,"date":"2020-04-22T19:04:57","date_gmt":"2020-04-23T02:04:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/the-evolution-of-the-ear-canal-in-an-ancient-crocodile-relative"},"modified":"2020-04-22T19:04:57","modified_gmt":"2020-04-23T02:04:57","slug":"the-evolution-of-the-ear-canal-in-an-ancient-crocodile-relative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/the-evolution-of-the-ear-canal-in-an-ancient-crocodile-relative","title":{"rendered":"The evolution of the ear canal in an ancient crocodile relative"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

An international team of researchers has found that an ancient crocodile relative underwent body transitions as it evolved from a land to a sea creature before its ears changed to suit an underwater environment. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/i>, the group describes their in-depth study of thalattosuchia skulls and what they found.<\/p>\n

Thalattosuchia was an ancient crocodile species that lived in the world\u2019s oceans over 150 million years ago. But before that, they were land-dwelling. Prior research has shown that they took to water in a much slower fashion than other creatures like whales, existing as semi-aquatic creatures for many years before becoming full-fledged sea creatures. Study of their fossilized remains has shown their front legs evolving to become fins, and their back legs evolving into a fluked tail. Their bodies grew slimmer and sleeker to so they could glide smoothly through the water. And once they became sea creatures, their internal organs<\/a> changed to suit the new environment. One such organ was the inner ear. And it was this organ that was the focus of this new work.<\/p>\n

To learn more about the evolution of thalattosuchia\u2019s ears<\/a>, the researchers conducted CAT scans on over a dozen skull fossils. They focused most specifically on the inner ear structures used to maintain balance and equilibrium in land creatures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An international team of researchers has found that an ancient crocodile relative underwent body transitions as it evolved from a land to a sea creature before its ears changed to suit an underwater environment. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their in-depth study of thalattosuchia skulls [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,385],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-evolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105891\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}