Claim: I'm all ears: fossils reveal human ancestors' hearing abilities.
Verdict: SUPPORTS

Retrieved passages:
title: Evolution of the cochlea
text: and other sedimentary remains. With the use of X-ray technologies, it is possible to ascertain some information about the auditory capabilities of extinct creatures, giving insight to human ancestors as well as their contemporary species. While the basic structure of the inner ear in lepidosaurs (lizards and snakes), archosaurs (birds and crocodilians) and mammals is similar, and the organs are considered to be homologous, each group has a unique type of auditory organ. The hearing organ arose within the lagenar duct of stem reptiles, lying between the saccular and lagenar epithelia. In lepidosaurs, the hearing organ, the basilar papilla, is

title: Evolution of the cochlea
text: apex of the cochlea faces more inferiorly in the hominins than the latter two groups. Finally, the cochlea of European middle Pleistocene hominins faces more inferiorly than Neanderthals, modern humans, and Homo erectus. Human beings, along with Apes, are the only mammals that do not have high frequency (>32 kHz) hearing. Humans have long cochleae, but the space devoted to each frequency range is quite large (2.5mm per octave), resulting in a comparatively reduced upper frequency limit. The human cochlea has approximately 2.5 turns around the modiolus (the axis). Humans, like many mammals and birds, are able to perceive auditory

title: Evolution of the cochlea
text: signals that displace the eardrum by a mere picometre. Because of its prominence and preserved state in the fossil record, until recently, the ear had been used to determine phylogeny. The ear itself contains different portions, including the outer ear, the middle ear, and the inner ear and all of these show evolutionary changes that are often unique to each lineage [14]. It was the independent evolution of a tympanic middle ear in the Triassic era that produced strong selection pressures towards improved hearing organs in the separate lineages of land vertebrates. The cochlea is the tri-chambered auditory detection portion

title: Homo heidelbergensis
text: (Spain) of 28 human skeletons suggest that "H. heidelbergensis" might have been the first species of the genus "Homo" to bury its dead. The morphology of the outer and middle ear suggests they had an auditory sensitivity similar to modern humans. They were probably able to differentiate between many different sounds. Dental wear analysis suggests they were as likely to be right-handed as modern people. Steven Mithen believes that "H. heidelbergensis", like its descendant "H. neanderthalensis", acquired a pre-linguistic system of communication. No forms of art have been uncovered, although red ochre, a mineral that can be used to mix

title: Zeresenay Alemseged
text: the fossil record and is the only example from a species of her antiquity. This bone is presumed to have played an important role in the development of human speech and its recovery gives us some clues towards understanding the nature and evolution of the human voicebox. This extraordinary ancient skeleton preserves a mosaic of features shared by both humans and the apes and clearly shows that both the anatomy and behavior of our ancestors was changing, slowly but progressively. In other words, evolution was in the making. The DRP Zeresenay's research interests lie in the discovery and analysis of

title: Evolution of the cochlea
text: also traces back to the Cretaceous period. The evolution of the human cochlea is a major area of scientific interest because of its favourable representation in the fossil record. During the last century, many scientists such as evolutionary biologists and paleontologists strove to develop new methods and techniques to overcome the many obstacles associated with working with ancient, delicate artifacts. In the past, scientists were limited in their ability to fully examine specimens without causing damage to them. In more recent times, technologies such as micro-CT scanning became available. These technologies allow for the visual differentiation between fossilized animal materials

title: Evolution of mammalian auditory ossicles
text: required when classifying fossils, since mammary glands and other soft-tissue features are not visible in fossils. Paleontologists therefore use a distinguishing feature that is shared by all living mammals (including monotremes), but is not present in any of the early Triassic therapsids ("mammal-like reptiles"): mammals use two bones for hearing that all other amniotes use for eating. The earliest amniotes had a jaw joint composed of the articular (a small bone at the back of the lower jaw) and the quadrate (a small bone at the back of the upper jaw). All non-mammalian amniotes use this system including lizards, crocodilians,

title: Jacob Theodor Klein
text: these bones. The bone to which Klein was referring, now called the otolith, acquires a growth ring every day for at least the first six months of its life. Klein inquiries into the nature of the passages by which vibrations produce a sense of hearing. He inspects the head of a Pike fish and observes several holes with bristles which lead to the auditory bones. He later dissected a Sturgeon fish and traced the auditory duct to the membrane in which the three bones are placed. Klein concludes that fishes do indeed have hearing organs and passages, communicated to through

title: Evolution of mammalian auditory ossicles
text: states is one of the most well-documented<ref name="urlCuffey 2 - Acknowledgements / References"></ref> and supported in all of evolution, and newly discovered fossils from this transitional period have recently improved our understanding of this transition. But they also suggest that it was not a simple linear process from the early therapsid jaw (quadrate-articular joint) and middle ear (with stapes as the only ossicles) to the modern mammalian anatomy. Natural selection could be a factor in the preservation of the structure of the middle ear in mammals. Many of the earliest mammals were quite small, and the dentition indicates that they

title: Prehistoric music
text: paleolithic objects which are considered unambiguously musical are bone flutes or pipes; paleolithic finds which are open to interpretation are pierced phalanges (usually interpreted as "phalangeal whistles"), objects interpreted as bullroarers, and rasps. Music can be theoretically traced to prior to the Paleolithic age, the anthropological and archaeological designation suggests that music first arose (among humans) when stone tools first began to be used by hominids. The noises produced by work such as pounding seed and roots into meal is a likely source of rhythm created by early humans. The oldest flute ever discovered may be the so-called Nicholas flute,

title: OH 7
text: OH 7 OH 7 (Olduvai Hominid № 7), also nicknamed "Johnny's Child", is the type specimen of "Homo habilis". The fossils were discovered on November 4, 1960 in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, by Jonathan and Mary Leakey. The remains are dated to approximately 1.75 million years, and consist of fragmented parts of a lower mandible (which still holds thirteen teeth, as well as unerupted wisdom teeth), an isolated maxillary molar, two parietal bones, and twenty-one finger, hand, and wrist bones. The OH 7 hand is wide, with a large thumb and broad fingertips, similar to that of humans; however, unlike in

title: Language
text: observed today. Theories that stress continuity often look at animals to see if, for example, primates display any traits that can be seen as analogous to what pre-human language must have been like. And early human fossils can be inspected for traces of physical adaptation to language use or pre-linguistic forms of symbolic behaviour. Among the signs in human fossils that may suggest linguistic abilities are: the size of the brain relative to body mass, the presence of a larynx capable of advanced sound production and the nature of tools and other manufactured artifacts. It was mostly undisputed that pre-human

title: Archaeo-optics
text: qualities such as scent and smell. The social significance of the sensory of food and drink, and touch and texture can also be considered. Other studies have examined archaeomusicology and archaeoacoustics. Palaeolithic bone artifacts have been interpreted as musical instruments, or ‘sound producing devices’, while some natural features within caves have been found to emit unusual sounds. There have also been suggestions that Paleolithic cave art clusters in locations where caverns have especially resonant properties. In the 1990s the sonic properties of built architecture came under increasing scrutiny with investigations into vocally induced resonances inside chambered Neolithic sites, as well

title: Homo naledi
text: make the model, including skin, eyes, and hair. In May 2018, anthropologists provided evidence that the brain of "H. naledi" was small, but nonetheless complex, sharing structural similarities with the modern human brain. The bones were found lying on the cave floor or buried in its claylike sediments ("mud clast breccias") interspersed with layers of deposited calcite flowstone. Geologists estimate that the cave in which the fossils were discovered is no older than three million years. The discovery team waited until after the research article was published before trying radiocarbon dating because the technique destroys parts of the fossils. Radiocarbon

title: Evolution of mammalian auditory ossicles
text: since this discovery an abundance of transitional fossils has both supported the conclusion and given a detailed history of the transition. The evolution of the stapes (from the hyomandibula) was an earlier and distinct event. Following on the ideas of Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1818), and studies by Johann Friedrich Meckel the Younger (1820), Carl Gustav Carus (1818), Martin Rathke (1825), and Karl Ernst von Baer (1828), the relationship between the reptilian jaw bones and mammalian middle-ear bones was first established on the basis of embryology and comparative anatomy by Karl Bogislaus Reichert (in 1837, before the publication of "On the

title: Evolution of mammalian auditory ossicles
text: But once these bones were no longer involved in the jaw joint, variations which affected hearing would not also affect jaw joint function, and this allowed unconstrained evolution of the mammalian hearing apparatus. By the Jurassic, the typical mammalian ear had evolved, in which the angular had become the tympanic annula (a bony support for the tympanic membrane), while the articular and quadrate had become the malleus and incus, respectively, connected in series with the stapes. This series of three bones acts as an impedance matching system to improve sound transmission and allow enhanced hearing. The transition between these two

title: Neanderthal behavior
text: the muscles of the tongue, necessary to produce language. However, a Berkeley research team showed no correlation between canal size and speech, as a number of extant non-human primates and fossilized australopithecines have larger hypoglossal canals. The morphology of the outer and middle ear of "Homo heidelbergensis", the Neanderthal's ancestor, suggests they had an auditory sensitivity similar to modern humans and different from chimpanzees. Neanderthal and early anatomically modern human archaeological sites show a more simple toolkit than those found in Upper Paleolithic sites, produced by modern humans after about 50,000 BP. In both early anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals,

title: Satsurblia Cave
text: 2013, archaeologists found a temporal bone fragment of an ancient human in the cave. Direct AMS dating of the bone yielded an estimated date of 13,300 BP for the age of the bone. Researchers successfully extracted DNA from the petrous part of the temporal bone and managed to recover low coverage genomes. The ancient individual from Satsurblia was male with black hair and brown eyes; however, the individual is one of the earliest found to carry the derived HERC2 allele for blue eyes. The Satsurblia individual also likely had light skin, as he was found to carry the derived SLC24A5

title: Evolution of the cochlea
text: at the same time as the water-to-land transition of vertebrates, approximately 380 million years ago. The actual coiling or spiral nature of the cochlea occurred to save space inside the skull. The longer the cochlea, the higher is the potential resolution of sound frequencies given the same hearing range. The oldest of the truly coiled mammalian cochleae were approximately 4 mm in length. The earliest evidence available for primates depicts a short cochlea with prominent laminae, suggesting that they had good high-frequency sensitivity as opposed to low-frequency sensitivity. After this, over a period of around 60 million years, evidence suggests

title: Piltdown Man
text: Smith Woodward purportedly discovered more bones and artifacts at the site, which they connected to the same individual. These finds included a jawbone, more skull fragments, a set of teeth, and primitive tools. Smith Woodward reconstructed the skull fragments and hypothesised that they belonged to a human ancestor from 500,000 years ago. The discovery was announced at a Geological Society meeting and was given the Latin name "Eoanthropus dawsoni" ("Dawson's dawn-man"). The questionable significance of the assemblage remained the subject of considerable controversy until it was conclusively exposed in 1953 as a forgery. It was found to have consisted of