Inner ear fossilized whale bone South Carolina

This bone, which is about 10 million years old, is the inner ear of an ancestor of today’s whales. As in humans, the resonance tool of cetaceans is made of several "floating" bones because connected by ligaments, so as not to be deceived by the sound of water on the whale itself. This very dense shell-shaped bone is the tympanic bula. The largest. And this is probably an ancestor of the sperm whale, the toothed whale. This bone dates from the Miocene epoch and comes from Berkeley County, South Carolina. Besides you can always look for the ears of a sperm whale: there are none! it is his jaw that transmits the vibrations to this floating bone.