Bird-like dinosaur could hunt in total darkness, pointing to thriving prehistoric nightlife
Under the cover of darkness in desert habitats about 70 million years ago, in what is today Mongolia and northern China, a gangly looking dinosaur employed excellent night vision and superb hearing to thrive as a menacing pint-sized nocturnal predator.
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Posted: May 07, 2021 12:15 PM ET | Last Updated: May 7
Prof. Jonah Choiniere of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, is seen holding a 3D-printed model of the lagena, an inner-ear structure, of the small bird-like dinosaur Shuvuuia deserti.(Shivan Parusnath/University of the Witwatersrand/Reuters)
True or False? Owls Inherited Their Night-hunting Abilities From Dinosaur Published May 7th, 2021 - 05:48 GMT
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Study shows: Owls may have inherited their night-hunting abilities from dinosaurs
New research suggests a small bird-like dinosaur s exacting night vision and owl-like hearing allowed it to track down prey in the black of night.
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Nocturnal hunting is relatively rare among predators, as it requires specialized sensory abilities many of the best night-hunters are birds, including owls, nightjars, nighthawks and more.
Because modern birds are the closest living relatives of the dinosaurs, scientists have previously surmised that the night-hunting capabilities of owls and other nocturnal birds might be inherited from their theropod ancestors.
A TINY dinosaur that lived in the desert had extraord-inary vision and owl-like hearing that enabled it to hunt in the dark, new research has found. Scientists have long wondered whether theropod dinosaurs – the group that gave rise to modern birds – had sensory adaptations similar to those of birds which enable them to hunt prey at night. A new study sought to investigate how the vision and hearing abilities of dinosaurs and birds compared and discovered that a theropod named Shuvuuia, part of a group known as alvarezsaurs, had both extraordinary hearing and night vision. The international team of researchers used CT scanning and detailed measurements to collect information on the relative size of the eyes and inner ears of nearly 100 living bird and extinct dinosaur species.
Mick Ellison-AMNH
A tiny bird-like dinosaur with long legs and muscular, clawed arms was quite the night owl.
Shuvuuia deserti lived around 75 to 81 million years ago and not only had remarkable hearing, but also well-honed night vision – much better than that of other dinosaurs and most modern birds.
This odd creature was first discovered in the mid-1990s, but a new analysis of its inner ear bones shows that it may have been a nocturnal hunter, like modern owls.
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Jonah Choiniere at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and his colleagues analysed 3D scans of
S. deserti’s inner ear and found that it had a very large lagena, a structure responsible for hearing. The larger the lagena relative to the skull, the more sensitively an animal can hear – and this one was bigger than researchers had ever seen in a dinosaur.
Shuvuuia, a small desert-living dinosaur that lived in the Mongolian desert more than 65 million years ago, had extraordinary night vision, a study of its remains reveals.
About the size of a chicken, the weird bird-like dinosaur had some of the proportionally largest pupils ever measured in dinosaurs or modern-day birds, experts say.
Shuvuuia was a theropod – a clade of dinosaurs characterised by hollow bones and three-toed limbs. The clade includes the notorious Tyrannosaurus rex.
Shuvuuia was discovered more than 20 years ago but has since fascinated scientists for its weird appearance and small size – around just two feet in length.
Artist s reconstruction of Shuvuuia deserti - the sole species of the Shuvuuia genus. Shuvuuia is known from a well-preserved skull and postcranium