Alligators have a one-way path for breathing that is similar to birds’, new research shows. The findings, published in the Jan. 15 Science, could explain how dinosaurs’ ancestors rose to prominence.
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“It’s absolutely transformational,” comments Adam Summers of the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories. “It really makes us think hard about our interpretations of anatomy.”
Unlike a mammal’s breath, which exits the lungs from the same dead-end chambers it enters, a bird’s breath takes a loopy one-way street through its lungs.