Hairy Museum of Natural History

A post from the HMNH curator of Ich-theology, Ray Troll:

You know that snarky feeling you get when you blow your nose too damn hard and you blow your eardrums out? Well it just might be that we have our fishy ancestors to thank for that lovely sensation. We all know that the knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone but only vaguely suspect that our lungs are connected to our ears. But once upon a time, way, way back in the Devonian days, our fishy ancestors may have been able to breathe through their ears! How cool is that? Just imagine the possibilities if we could still perform such a feat: you could fake your own drowning death in the family bathtub, win all those driving-by-the-graveyard-and-holding-your-breath contests, and snorkels would be obsolete.

“One Small Step for a Fish”
Panderichthys (bottom) and Acanthostega (top)
© Ray Troll

But seriously, Drs. Martin Brazeau and Per Ahlberg closely reexamined the inner ear chambers of the Devonian lobefin fish Panderichthys and came to the conclusion that the fish used it’s ear to gulp air. Their findings are published in the January 18, 2006 issue of Nature . Read all about it at Nature online.

I’ve long been curious about the positioning of the nostrils on the lower part of the head in this group of fish and this theory helps answer that puzzle.

—Ray Troll.

File under: Bony Fish, Devonian, Ich-Theology.