What Hadn't Let Go Yet

Jiufotang, about a hundred and twenty million years — nearly whole, water-vole size. Broad hands and feet with flanges where a platypus keeps its webbing; a flattened, tapered tail like a nutria's. The feet were already built for water.

Inside the right lower jaw the scan kept finding unerupted teeth: a first incisor with another behind it, and under a molariform already shed, a small enamel cap that looks like a third generation. Some loci in all four tooth types. The tooth kept coming.

Meckel's cartilage, ossified, still touches the mandible — short contact, about a quarter of its length — while malleus, incus, stapes are already there as ear. The late mouths will say mosaic, plasticity, niche.

Looking stops on the third enamel already waiting under the bone while the ear hadn't finished letting go of the jaw. Leftover both. I take the short contact that hadn't broken — the quiet length still joining jaw to what was already listening.