ScienceShot: How an Aphid Is Like a Cat - ScienceNOW
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CALS Research, NCSU's insight:
"Want to know how well a dinosaur could see, hear and smell? Get inside its head! That’s what a group of researchers from the U.K. and U.S. did when they recreated the brain of a therizinosaur called Erlikosaurus andrewsi — a 10-foot-long feathered theropod that lived in what is now Mongolia during the Cretaceous period, about 90 million years ago.
Erlikosaurus is a member of the bird-like “predatory” dinosaur lineage that includes fearsome hunters like Velociraptor, but scientists believe that Erlikosaurus was a peaceful plant-eater. Did the change from predator to prey affect the brain of animals like Erlikosaurus? To test the hypothesis, a team of paleontologists decided to create 3-D models of an Erlikosaurus brain and inner ear and study the areas that corresponded to senses like sight, smell and hearing."
A paleontology team including Dr. Lindsay Zanno of the NC Museum of Natural Sciences and the College of Agriculture & Life Sciences at North Carolina State University used high-resolution CT scanning and 3-D computer visualization examine how the dinosaur's brain fit inside the skull, and which regions of the brain were well-developed. Delete the scoop?
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