Scientists Have Reconstructed The Hearing Abilities Of Our Ancestors

Plants and Animals





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The hearing of ancient hominins may have been more sensitive to higher frequencies. Tim Evanson/Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0

Working out how ancient species lived is often difficult, especially when trying to figure out how they sensed things. This is because most sensory organs, like the eyes and tongue, are made of soft tissue that don’t preserve well, forcing scientists to make assumptions from limited data. Yet there is one sense – hearing – that can be studied because it is based, in part, on skeletal structures, albeit very tiny ones.