Hints at jaw evolution found in marsupials and monotremes

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Infant marsupials and monotremes use a connection between their ear and jaw bones shortly after birth to enable them to drink their mothers' milk, new findings in eLife reveal.

This discovery by researchers at King's College London, UK, provides new insights about early development in mammals, and may help scientists better understand how the bones of the middle ear and jaw evolved in mammals and their predecessors.

Marsupials such as opossums, and monotremes such as echidnas, are unusual types of mammals. Both types of animal are born at a very early stage in development, before many bones in the body have started to form. Opossums latch on to their mother's nipple and stay there while they finish developing. Monotremes, which hatch from eggs, lap milk collected near their mother's milk glands as they grow. But how they are able to drink the milk before their jaw joint is fully developed was previously unclear.

"Given the lack of a jaw joint in marsupials and monotremes at birth, scientists have previously suggested that the animals may use a connection between the middle ear bones and jaw bones to allow them to feed," explains lead author Neal Anthwal, Research Associate at the Centre for Craniofacial & Regenerative Biology, at King's College London's Faculty of Dentistry, Oral & Craniofacial Sciences in the UK.

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And in this day the scientific community has no certainty about the evolution in mammals/theropods that gave rise to the monotremes