Re: ABCNEWS.COM on dinosaur lungs

[Ronald Orenstein <ornstn@inforamp.net>]

At 12:50 PM 14/11/97 -0500, you wrote:
>    ABCNEWS.COM today, November 14, has a feature on the current Science
>magazine (Nov. 14) article claiming that bird lungs are so dissimilar to
>dinosaur lungs that one could not have come from the other.
>
>    "It's almost impossible," says John Ruben, a zoologist at Oregon State
>and one of the paper's authors. "It's almost completely antithetical. It
>doesn't fit. It is just totally inconsistent."
>
>     Such a lung would be unlikely to evolve into a bird lung, which is
>entwined among the other internal organs. Ruben believes that both lungs
>evolved independently from a hypothetical common ancestor. 

This sounds completely kooky, though it is probably a lot better in Science!

For one thing, bird lungs are not "entwined among the other internal
organs" - I assume this is a reporter's confusion over the air-sac system,
which I suppose could be described in this way.

Second - How the heck do we know what dinosaur lungs were like?  And I was
under the impression that at least some theropods had the hollow long bones
and foramina that, in birds, are invaded by the air-sac system - am I all
wet here?
--
Ronald I. Orenstein                           Phone: (905) 820-7886
International Wildlife Coalition              Fax/Modem: (905) 569-0116
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