Re: sauropod lung collapse

["Richard W. Travsky" <rtravsky@uwyo.edu>]

On Tue, 10 Jan 2006, Phil Bigelow wrote:
> [...]
>
> One last question:  Do penguin lungs collapse during dives?  What role
> does their air sacs play during diving?

October 22nd issue of Science News had an interesting article on penguins
and it had a little on that.

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20051022/bob10.asp
...
Plenty of mysteries remain about penguins' diving prowess. Ponganis, his 
Scripps colleague Torrence Knower Stockard, and an international team 
found that when diving, penguins nearly deplete the oxygen in the special 
avian air sacs attached to their lungs. The team measured oxygen remaining 
in the air sacs during the last 15 seconds of an emperor penguin's dive.

For 42 percent of about 70 dives made by four test birds, air-sac oxygen 
dropped below 20 millimeters of mercury (mmHg), the researchers report in 
the Aug. 1 Journal of Experimental Biology. Should a person's lung-oxygen 
supply drop below 25 mmHg, "we're passing out," says Ponganis. 
...


There's a set of references at the end of the article.