About 65 million years ago, most of the dinosaurs and many other animals and plants were wiped off Earth, probably due to an asteroid hitting our planet. Why did some species survive? A new study suggests that one group of survivors, the birds, may have sniffed their way across by evolving an enhanced sense of smell.
Scientists had long thought that birds have a poor sense of smell. But several recent studies show that birds use smell to help them forage for food, communicate with other birds, and even orient themselves in flight. And a 2009 study of dinosaur olfaction, led by paleontologist Darla Zelenitsky of the University of Calgary in Canada, found that dinosaur lineages thought to have given rise to today's birds some 150 million years ago had a keener sense of smell than dinosaurs that went extinct without leaving feathered progeny behind.
read more from this article here: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/04/early-birds-smelled-good.html?ref=hp
No comments:
Post a Comment