Research from Sweden on fossils of a fish species that lived 370 million years ago has revealed that auditory organs developed alongside respiratory organs.
Per Ahlberg from Uppsala University, north of Stockholm, stated that the fossils indicate how a developed ear followed a complex sequence and was related to the respiratory process.
To understand how the ear developed in the earliest animals on Earth, Ahlberg and his colleague Martin Brazeau studied the auditory organs in the fossils of a prehistoric fish species called Panderichthys.
Ahlberg explained that Panderichthys is one of the closest relatives to terrestrial animals among all the fish fossils they have studied.
On the skeletal remains of this fish, there is a part resembling an ear; however, it is not an ear.
He emphasized: Clearly, it is not an ear because it has no connection to the internal auditory structure. If you observe the first reptiles, you will see that their ears are quite similar to those of Panderichthys, and it appears that there was no presence of an eardrum, suggesting that they may have breathed through their ears.
According to him, for the first animals on Earth, the respiratory function still existed, but the auditory function had begun to develop.
