Fossils’ ear design hints at aquatic lifestyle

One of Earth’s earliest-known four-limbed creatures–long thought to have been a land dweller at least part of the time–could hear best when it was underwater, according to new studies of fossilized skulls.

Remains of Ichthyostega, a stout-limbed tetrapod that lived about 360 million years ago, were first described by scientists in the 1930s.