Thank you, Tom! That's a great point; you're right that our sample didn't allow us to compare among the ossicle types *directly*. We should point this out in the next version of the manuscript. Hopefully, this will be resolved with more data accumulating.

Hello Tom, and thank you - the stapes is indeed not often recovered and our sample from Köşkhöyük might be overall better preserved than its contemporaries. We compared stapes with cochlea from the same individuals to try to address such confounding effects. Thanks again!