An artist's reconstruction of the Weberian apparatus in a 67 million-year-old fossil fish. The Weberian structure (gold-colored bones at center) arose from a rib (shown in gray attached to several ...

The vertebrate ear is a remarkable structure. Tightly encapsulated within the densest bone of the skeleton, it comprises the smallest elements of the vertebrate skeleton (auditory ossicles) and gives ...

EVOLUTION HAS NO foresight. But occasionally it flukes something ideally suited to develop into something else. Biologists call this preadaptation, and it seems to explain the existence of three small ...

Otosclerosis is one of many hearing disorders found only in humans, affecting the otic capsule. It occurs when the joints between the ossicles in the middle ear become hardened with age. The formation ...