The inner ear of an ancient reptile offers a promising entry point to two particular phenomena: how dinosaurs interacted with each other and how they began to fly.
According to a new study, the shape of the inner ear offers reliable signs as to whether an animal soared gracefully through the air, flew only fitfully, walked on the ground, or sometimes went swimming. In some cases, the inner ear even indicates whether a species did its parenting by listening to the high-pitched cries of its babies.
“Of all the structures that one can reconstruct from fossils, the inner ear is perhaps that which is most similar to a mechanical device,” Bhart-Anjan Bhullar, an assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences at Yale University and an assistant curator at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.