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Warm-Bloodedness in Mammals May Have Arisen in Late Triassic
Researchers mapped ear canal shape to body temperature to predict when ancestors of
mammals first became endothermic.

Andy Carstens

Jul 21, 2022


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ABOVE:
A mammaliamorph’s hot breath suggests it is warm-blooded.
LUZIA SOARES
Changes in inner ear canal morphology over time suggest that mammalian ancestors
called mammaliamorphs evolved warm-bloodedness around 233 million years ago during
the late Triassic period, according to research published yesterday (July 20) in
Nature. The analysis provides new clues to the outstanding question of when mammals
switched from relying on external heat to regulate their body temperatures
(ectothermy) to generating their own heat (endothermy).

Inside ears, semicircular ducts filled with a fluid called endolymph help animals
perceive head motion to improve motor coordination, balance, and spatial awareness,
the study authors write. But not all inner ears are created equal.

“Mammals have very unique inner ears,” study coauthor Ricardo Araújo, a vertebrate
paleontologist at the University of Lisbon, tells Science News. This led Araújo and
his team to hypothesize that because endolymph is more viscous in warm-blooded
animals, their canal structures may have evolved differently than in ectotherms,
the outlet reports.

See “Mammalian Jaws Evolved to Chew Sideways”

To find out, Araújo and his colleagues used an X-ray scanning technique called
microtomography to analyze the ear canal morphologies of hundreds of vertebrates—
both modern and extinct species—and found that mammals have smaller, thinner, and
more circular ear canals than do cold-blooded animals, reports New Scientist. From
this analysis, according to Science News, the team created an index that maps ear
canal shape to body temperature.


When the researchers applied this indexing methodology to 56 fossils of extinct
animals, they found that morphology consistent with warm-bloodedness emerged
abruptly in a group of animals called mammaliamorphs around 233 million years ago,
during the late Triassic period. Previous research suggests endothermy in mammals
evolved gradually over 120 million years, reports New Scientist, but the new
evidence tells a different tale. “The fact that it is a sharp break in the data
[suggests] the transition happened rapidly—within about a million years,” coauthor
Kenneth Angielczyk, a paleontologist at the Field Museum in Chicago, tells Science
News.

These findings don’t apply to birds, which evolved warm-bloodedness independently

from mammals, reports New Scientist.