A new study shows that a small carnivorous dinosaur excels in night vision and hearing, and an owl that hunts its prey at night. A three-toed dinosaur, only 2 feet tall, called Shuvuuia. His eyes are larger and his cochlea is longer. They are part of the inner ear canal and contain sensory receptors. The creature uses these skills to see in the dark and hear better than barn owls.
This particular species used to roam between 75 and 81 million years ago (Late Cretaceous), in the Gobi Desert area of ​​modern Mongolia, the Shuvuuia were a strange dinosaur although they were related to the terrible T-Rex. Animals that live together in the same geographic location are forced to share their own animals. Researchers say they tend to look for prey day and night, but they added that it is difficult to distinguish this preference only from fossil data of extinct animals, which is understandable when looking at living organisms.
Jonah Choiniere, a professor at the Institute of Evolution at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, told the news agency that his ear canal indicated that his hearing would be “out of date.” The results are published online. Published in “Science” magazine and reported by Live Science.
According to this report, the researchers examined the fossils of the eyes and used computer tomography to study the anatomy of the ears to create a 3D digital model of the animal skull. They found that the scleral ring of this dinosaur was very large, forming a round bone in the orbit. The combination of better vision and hearing led the researchers to conclude that Shuvuuia may be a very effective nocturnal predator.
The co-author of the study, Lars Schmitz, associate professor of biology at the W. Keck School of Science at Scripps College in Claremont, California, said that this is the first time such a profound discovery has been made in hearing and vision. Extinct dinosaurs. Like modern species, extinct species exhibit complex behaviors, but fossils usually reveal some of these details.
