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