When the first fish evolved, they might have repurposed the gill-forming genes from these ancient creatures. The bendy cartilage in mammals’ outer ears today, then, may be “the last remnant of ...

This suggests the gene network that makes the elastic cartilage in the fish gills became active in reptiles’ ear canal first and then in mammals’ outer ear. “So what we imagine is ...

This is exactly what Thiruppathy and colleagues did in a tour-de-force comparative genomic study that included a fish, an amphibian, a reptile, a mammal and ... cells (also known as chondrocytes ...