Take a quick trip to the mirror and look closely at where the top of your ear cartilage meets the side of your face. Do you see a tiny, barely-there indentation that looks like a pinprick? Or maybe you’ve noticed this subtle little mark on a friend, a family member, or a newborn baby, and assumed it was just a remnant of an old, abandoned cartilage piercing.
As it turns out, that tiny hole is completely natural. It is not the result of a needle, a scar, or an accident. It is a fascinating, relatively rare congenital quirk known in the medical world as a preauricular pit (or preauricular sinus).
While it might look like nothing more than a microscopic dimple, the story behind how it gets there—and what it might mean about the ancient history of the human body—is absolutely mind-blowing.
What Exactly Is a Preauricular Pit?
To understand what this tiny mark is, we have to go all the way back to the womb.
