Largest Pupil And Biggest Lagena In Shuvuuia Dinosaur

By Empower Young Journalist Ananya Singh

Johannesburg, May 13: A recent comparative study was done by an international team of researchers on vision and hearing abilities of dinosaurs and birds. They used CT (computed tomography) scanned images and detailed measurements, length of lagena (the organ that processes incoming sound) and length of pupil of more
than one hundred living birds and extinct dinosaurs.
In their study, they were surprised to see a very small theropod (a genus of two-legged carnivorous dinosaurs), Shuvuuia deserti, had extraordinary hearing and night vision. It was the size of a chicken with a delicate bird-like skull, brawny weightlifter arms with a single claw on each, and long roadrunner-like legs. They lived during the
Cretaceous period (65 million years ago) in present-day Mongolia. It has the largest lagena, almost equal in size to today’s barn owls which have the longest lagena of any bird. It also had the largest pupils compared to the other dinosaurs. This suggests that they were good at hunting during night.