There’s always someone.

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pbstv:

One of the most amazing things about being a mammal is our sensitive hearing. Where does it come from? — These three little bones in our middle ear.

Our reptile ancestors only had one bone, but our two extra bones enable us to amplify sound.

Learn more and tune in tomorrow night (4/16) on PBS at 10/9c when Your Inner Fish continues.

I don’t usually pay attention to the Tumblr Radar, but this gif caught my attention because I’ve kind of wondered how those ear bones work. So I clicked through and watched the video, and it was quite interesting; A+ would recommend.

The most unexpectedly interesting part for me was when, in describing the process whereby early synapsids went from reptilian ear anatomy (with only one ear bone) to mammalian ear anatomy (with three ear bones), the science dude used the term “mammal-like reptile”.

Bzzzzt. I suspect that’s wrong (or at least frowned upon these days). Referring to early synapsids as mammal-like reptiles confuses the evolutionary relationship, because those organisms are not reptiles, and are more closely related to modern mammals (being in our direct ancestral line) than to reptiles (which descended from a common ancestor that came before synapsids).

I learned about that thanks to thebrainscoop‘s recent post about filming the “Dimetrodon is not a dinosaur” episode, and especially by reading the super-interesting paper by Kenneth D. Angielczyk, Dimetrodon Is Not a Dinosaur: Using Tree Thinking to Understand the Ancient Relatives of Mammals and their Evolution.

So. There it is.

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How Emily Graslie went from YouTube science star to full-time at the Field Museum:

A 20-year-old aspiring artist visited a zoological museum. Four years later, Emily Graslie is working at the Field Museum.

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