The US research team is working on artificial living ears to help people born with malformed ears or who have lost them in accidents or trauma.
Previously the researchers had grown an artificial ear, the size of a baby's, on a mouse.
In the latest development, published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, they took living tissues from cows and sheep and grew them on a flexible wire frame that has the 3D shape of a real human ear.
This was then implanted into a rat whose immune system they had suppressed enabling the ear to grow.
"We've demonstrated the first full-sized adult human ear on the rat model," Dr Thomas Cervantes, who led the study, told BBC News.
It was significant for several reasons, he said.
"One - we were able to keep the shape of the ear, after 12 weeks of growth in the rat. And then secondly we were also able to keep the natural flexibility of the cartilage."