Why the inner ear matters Experts studied the semicircular canals, the structures that help with balance. Changes in those bony canals serve as clues about population fluctuations. Analyzing those ...

The study was co-authored by Professor Rolf Quam and graduate student Brian Keeling. The team analyzed fossils that point to a serious Neanderthal population dip around 110,000 years ago. Ear fossils ...

Inner Ear Insights The semicircular canals, housed in the petrous portion of the temporal bone, are uniquely suited to preserving evolutionary history. These structures resist environmental and ...

Quam and his colleagues analyzed three groups of Neanderthals, comparing the semicircular canals of “pre-Neanderthal” and early Neanderthals to those of “classic” Neanderthals. The 400,000 ...

By comparing the shapes of the ear's semicircular canal in fossils from across Europe and western Asia with those in modern-day humans, the researchers could gauge the relative variety of body ...

More information: Alessandro Urciuoli et al, Semicircular canals shed light on bottleneck events in the evolution of the Neanderthal clade, Nature Communications (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025 ...

A paper on the findings was published in the journal Nature Communications. _____ A. Urciuoli et al. 2025. Semicircular canals shed light on bottleneck events in the evolution of the Neanderthal clade ...

Discover showtimes, read reviews, watch trailers, find streaming options, and see where to watch The SemiCircular Canals (1975). Explore cast details and learn more on Moviefone.

It also had other unusual aspects, including a smaller cochlea and abnormalities with the lateral semicircular canal (LSC), the shortest of the three ear canals, which, together, can cause hearing ...

Humans likely evolved an instinctive and emotional response to care for infants to ensure they survived, said Spikins, who wasn’t involved in the research.

Scientists have discovered the first case of Down syndrome among Neanderthals after analyzing a fossil found in Spain, which ...