Re: two news stories

[Dann Pigdon <dannj@alphalink.com.au>]

On Thu, Apr 14th, 2011 at 3:29 AM, Ian Paulsen <birdbooker@zipcon.net> wrote:

> What Saved the Dinosaurs:
> 
> http://www.livescience.com/13682-birds-survived-mass-extinction-dinosaurs.html

I suppose it all depends on what qualifies a 'good' sense of smell. Having 
large olfactory bulbs may 
give a creature a keen sense of smell (ie. able to extract more useful 
information out of less 
stimuli), however isn't the range of scents detectable largely dependant on the 
variety of scent 
receptors in the nose?

Theropods may well have been able to follow very faint scent trails, but for 
all we know the range 
of different scents they could detect may have been quite narrow. Without 
knowing what the scent 
receptors in the nasal cavity were like, we'll probably never know.

-- 
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Dann Pigdon
Spatial Data Analyst               Australian Dinosaurs
Melbourne, Australia               http://home.alphalink.com.au/~dannj
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