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Science 11 February 2005:
Vol. 307. no. 5711, pp. 861 - 862
DOI: 10.1126/science.1107202
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Perspectives

PALEONTOLOGY:
Homoplasy in the Mammalian Ear

Thomas Martin and Zhe-Xi Luo

The separation of the middle ear bones from the mandible is considered a defining feature of all modern mammals. But did this event happen once in a primitive mammalian ancestor or independently in the monotreme lineage and therian (marsupial and placental) lineage? As Martin and Luo discuss in their Perspective, a new fossil-the dentary bone of an ancient toothed monotreme-suggests that the middle ear bones formed independently in these two mammalian lineages, providing a remarkable example of homoplastic evolution.

T. Martin is at the Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg, D-60325 Frankfurt am Main, Germany. E-mail: tmartin{at}senckenberg.de. Z.-X. Luo is at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. E-mail: luoz{at}carnegiemnh.org

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)