Last night a thought occurred to me, and I wrote to Matt: If birds had gone extinct 66 Mya along with all the other dinosaurs, would it ever have occurred to us that they had flow-through lungs?
A month after I and Matt published our paper “Why is vertebral pneumaticity in sauropod dinosaurs so variable?” at Qeios , we were bemoaning how difficult it was to get anyone to review it. But what a difference the last nineteen days have made!
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I’ve been reading The Guinness Book of Animal Facts and Feats (Wood 1982) again. Here’s what he says on pages 98-99 about the strength of crocodiles, and what happens when they bite off more than they can chew.
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An important new paper is out: R. Kent Sanders and Colleen G. Farmer. 2012. The pulmonary anatomy of Alligator mississippiensis and Its similarity to the avian respiratory system.
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