Re: The Right-to-Left Shunt of Crocodilians Serves Digestion

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

> Birds have lost the shunt capability present in crocodiles and reptiles 
> (including snakes, some of which can eat meals bigger than their body 
> weight). Where did T. rex and the other supergiant predatory dinosaurs fit 
> on the scale?

Right in the place where Napoleon crossed the Mississippi, I'm afraid.

Crocodiles have a unique valve between the aorta and... some other blood 
vessel, _outside_ the heart, and a heart with four completely separated 
chambers. Extant non-archosaurian sauropsids have three-chambered hearts 
(with incomplete, sometimes almost complete, partitioning of the main 
chamber). These two conditions are evidently not homologous.