the big word: serendipitous

0 serendipitously = by chance? Using the big word may show the writer is well educated?02br
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00How Did Research on Hair Cell Regeneration Get Started?02h2

00Restoration of hair cells in mature animals after damage (hair cell regeneration) was not a major topic of research in hearing science until the late 1980s. Before that time, a small amount of research was being done on post-embryonic (after birth) hair cell growth in the vestibular (balance) epithelium of lower vertebrates, but no studies addressed hair cell regeneration in higher vertebrates such as birds and mammals. Scientists thought that hair cell regeneration was impossible in higher vertebrates and that the mature inner ear was incapable of producing new hair cells in response to trauma. Then, in 1986–87, two groups 01b01font00serendipitously02font02b00 discovered that birds can generate new hair cells after birth. The experiments were done by my group (at the time at the University of Virginia and now at this center) and by my friend, Dr. Doug Cotanche, who was initially at the University of Pennsylvania and is now at Harvard University. Both groups were studying the bird cochlea as a model for how hearing develops in mammals and how hair cell damage occurs in humans, because the bird inner ear is simpler to study than the mammalian inner ear. During these experiments, both groups found evidence suggesting that new hair cells were present in the mature bird cochlea after damage.0-