Chew on this: Millions of years before the emergence of true mammals, an early ancestor had a tiny, saddle-shaped bone connected to the jaw that was thought to belong to mammals alone. That bone, ...

But the hyoid matters for more than manners. As a sort of structural scaffold for the conduit between mouth and esophagus, this small-but-mighty bone shuttles food that’s already been partially broken ...

Scientists have confirmed that Nanotyrannus was a mature species, not a young T. rex. A microscopic look at its hyoid bone provided the key evidence, matching growth signals seen in known T. rex ...