The human parathyroid gland, which regulates the level of calcium in the blood, probably evolved from the gills of fish, according to researchers from King's College London. Writing in the latest edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Professor Anthony Graham and Dr Masataka Okabe suggest that the gills of ancestral marine creatures, which were used to regulate calcium levels, were internalised rather than lost when land-living, four-limbed animals – the tetrapods – evolved. Many physiological processes such as muscle contraction, blood coagulation and signalling by nerve cells, require specific levels of calcium in the body. In humans,...