KOMPAS.com- Shuvuuia is a species dinosaur small about the size of a chicken living in the desert. Scientists reveal this dinosaur had very sharp eyesight and hearing.
The new study was led by Professor Jonah Choiniere of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, south Africa.
Choiniere uses CT scans and detailed measurements to gather information about the sizes of nearly 100 species bird and the dinosaurs went extinct.
There are currently about 10,000 species of birds known to man on earth. This species lives in almost every habitat imaginable, but only a small proportion is adapted to hunting prey in the dark of night.
Report from Independent, Saturday (8/5/2021), all modern birds are direct descendants of theropod dinosaurs, such as Velociraptors and Tyrannosaurus rex (T-rex).
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For a long time, scientists wondered if the relatives of this formidable hunter had the ability to stalk their prey in the middle of the night.
And it turns out that the relative of the carnivorous dinosaurs was a small species, shuvuuia. This dinosaur species is known as alvarezsaurus.
This tiny dinosaur species has incredible hearing and night vision.
Having a very large earbone, scientists think shows that shuvuuia can hunt in total darkness.
In the study, the research team measured the hearing of a small, chicken-sized dinosaur by measuring the length of the lagena, an organ that processes incoming sound information, and is called the cochlea in mammals.
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The owl illustration has sharp eyesight and strong hearing at night which helps it hunt in the dark.
This shuvuuia ability is called the same as di owl. The predator of the night, can hunt in total darkness using only its hearing.
This is because owls have the longest lagena of any bird.
The team of scientists also looked at the scleral ring, which is a series of bones that surround each species ‘pupil, to assess the species’ night vision ability.
Next, they compared with the camera lens, the larger the pupil can open, the more light can enter, which allows better vision at night.
By measuring the diameter of the rings, scientists can find out how much light the eye can collect.
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The team of scientists found that many carnivorous theropod dinosaurs such as T-rex and Dromaeosaurus had vision optimized specifically for daytime.
On average they also had better hearing, which may have played an important role in helping them hunt.
However, according to Dr. James Neenan, lead author of the study, the large lagena in shuvuia is a surprising finding.
“When I digitally reconstructed the shuvuia skull, I didn’t expect the lagena’s size,” he said.
While watching her with Choiniere, Neenan said they might be wrong.
“I couldn’t believe what I saw when I got there – dinosaur ears weren’t supposed to look like that,” said Choiniera.
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When paying attention to shuvuuia eyes, activate them fossil this tiny dinosaur, showing that the species had some of the proportionally largest pupils ever measured in a bird or dinosaur.
This shows that they tend to see really well at night.
Shuvuuia was a small dinosaur, about the size of a chicken, and lived in the desert that is now Mongolia.
According to researchers, the fossil skeleton of this creature is also among the strangest of all existing dinosaurs.
This is because this species has a fragile, bird-like, muscular skull with large arms and one claw on each hand. Also, long legs like a runner.
This strange combination of anatomical features has puzzled scientists since its discovery in the 1990s.
Also read: Scientist: Baby T-Rex Dinosaur Born With Teeth and Ready to Hunt
But with new data on shuvuuia’s sensory abilities, the team of scientists hypothesized that, like many desert animals, Shuvuuia would forage at night.
They will use hearing and sight to see prey such as small mammals and insects, using their long legs to run fast towards their prey.
Shuvuuia also uses strong forelegs to dig their prey from pores or bushes.
“Nocturnal activity, the ability to dig and long hind legs are characteristic of animals living in the desert today,” said Professor Choiniere.
This surprising discovery saw all of them combined in a single dinosaur species that lived more than 65 million years ago.
Research on a small dinosaur species the size of a chicken has been published in the journal Science.
Also read: Dinosaur Fossil in Argentina Becomes the Largest Creature in the World Ever Found
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