h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: The Respiratory System of Dinosaurs - A62032628 Author: lanzababy - Pirate - Scout - adrift on life's ocean - U10790805 yet another Flea Market Rescue. There is a current link to this theme on the BBC homepage (Weird and Wonderful add-on) which reminded me of this entry sitting alone and forlorn in Flea Market. It was too good to leave to fossilise so I have tweaked it a bit. Here is the original PR thread http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/F13364060?thread=6540377 and the original Entry A50787615

For those of you who won't be able to see 'Weird and Wonderful' from outside the UK at the moment ( the Eds tell me it is 'broken') here is the link I was referring to.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8453053.stm

Hiya Lanzababy, great rescue

A couple of links for you: A13200229 and A590294 and any of these: C892 which may be useful to link to?



GB

I agree with GB - you can put them in reference tabs, thus:


Dinosaurs Of The Isle of Wight
Dinosaurs Of The Isle of Wight: Why The Island Is Special
Dinosaurs Of The Isle of Wight: Dinosaur Hunters
Dinosaurs Of The Isle of Wight: Ornithischians
Dinosaurs Of The Isle of Wight: Sauropods
Dinosaurs Of The Isle of Wight: Theropods
Dinosaurs Of The Isle of Wight: Pterosaurs
Dinosaurs Of The Isle of Wight: Live From Dinosaur Island


<BB<

Thanks both

Apologies for missing my mistake over your splendid Dinosaur entry GB. It was one of those pesky accidental spaces inside my link It's fixed now!

I'm going to leave out the one about endotherms/ectotherms, but have added all the Isle of Wight ones. (thanks bluebottle they are great) Do you think they look a bit *too* much though now? as in skewing the entry towards a UK focus?


Thanks for reading it!

We'd love more entries on dinosaurs, especially found at American, Chinese or European sites. Perhaps the addition of BB's links would advertise the fact how sparce the rest of the world's contributions are, and may inspire someone to redress the balance.

Let's hope so - probably not me as I am more interested in living animals. But I did think this entry should make it into the Guide. Let's hope I have done it justice.

A quick fix you can make:

Your footnotes need punctuating

Thank you for spotting that

Full stops added to footnotes

You have done an excellent job on this entry, Lanzababy, and I appreciate it very much. Thankyou for doing what I should have done quite some time ago

I am sure you left a message elsewhere asking me if I was happy with your work on this entry, but I can't find it. I hope you'll get to read this message anyway.

Thanks once more

I appreciate that Atticus! It's a loo-ong long time since I wrote anything like this ( college in fact) so my brain had to have a lot of rust removed from the far corners, to get those old cells fired up again.

Lanzababy, I found this on the BBC News website and wondered if there's anything there that may be of use for this entry: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8485263.stm

if not, it's interesting reading for you

GB

Thanks GB

It's not directly relevant in terms of respiration, but I will add it as a reference link as it talks about the ancestry of dinosaurs to birds.

Thanks for sending it to me

Hi Lanzababy. This is an interesting topic and it is well-presented. On a quick read through it, I spotted a few typos and punctuation problems which could be sorted. Since the entry has been in Peer Review more than a week, I presume that there will not be any major changes to the content, so I'll list them here now:

oxygen rich blood --> oxygen-rich blood
mammalian lung -- add a full stop
O'Connor -- you've used a curly apostrophe in a few places. It should be a straight one.
67 million year old --> 67-million-year-old
two hundred --> 200
bird like respiratory system --> bird-like (or even birdlike)
making then very effective --> making them very effective
which has lead to --> which has led to

I'm a bit worried about the first paragraph. It says that crocodiles and birds use a different way of breathing, without ever explaining how crocodiles breathe. Then it links to an article that says that it has only been recently discovered that alligators breathe the same way as birds, rather than like mammals with in/out breaths. This article reckons that this type of breathing evolved at the stage of the common ancestor of the birds and alligators.

What worries me is that if alligators breathe like birds, what way do crocodiles breathe? They're much closer related to alligators than to birds, so they should breathe the same way too. Nowhere in this article does it say that crocodiles breathe a different way.

I'd like to see the first sentence changed to not mention crocodiles at all, and to replace them with mammals.

Content:

I don't understand the first paragraph of "Air Sacs and How they Work" at all. It looks as if you have tidied up a confusing description that doesn't actually make sense. Can you make it any clearer?

Formatting, Typos, etc:

"The lungs of a bird do not, themselves, inflate." -- I think this would read better without the commas.

The "bird's respiratory system" link didn't work for me; it loaded half way then locked the browser. I had to close the browser and start again. I suggest you test it; if it is not reliable, it should not be linked to.

Here's a link to a site that does work for me:

http://www.mytoos.com/airsacs.html

Majungatholus atopus should be in italics. Common names for animals are not in italics, but the full Latin title should be. This also applies to Areoston Riocoloradensis, (which should have a small r on riocoloradensis). Tyrrannosaurus Rex is well enough known that it is a common name and can be left as it is.

The paragraph which starts "Their findings showed" has only three sentences, but uses the phrase "uncinate processes" in each, which is uncomfortable. Reword it to reduce this repitition. You could say "Those of running birds" in the third sentence, for example.

Thank you Gnomon for your time and helpful feedback. I will get to work on it soon and post when I've completed it.

Looking at the issue raised by Gnomon, the link to the news item about alligator and bird breathing sytems suggest that they both share a common crocodilian ancestor. This seems to imply that its not just alligators that share the same breathing mechanism as birds but all crocodilians. For this reason it is probably the opening sentence of the entry that needs to be changed.

The problem raised by Gnomin about the description of the air sacs of birds.....

"The air sacs in a bird's respiratory system allow air to move in one direction so that only fresh oxygen-rich air enters the lungs"

Could be changed to:

"A bird's respiratory system only allows air to move in one direction so that only fresh oxygen-rich air enters the lungs"

I also think the word 'themselves' could be removed from the next sentence to make it flow better (its not playing a vital role in the sentence). To continue that flow into the next sentence, it could begin with: "Instead, as the bird inhales the posterior sacs inflate...."

Taken as a whole the beginning of this paragraph cold read:

A bird's respiratory system only allows air to move in one direction so that only fresh oxygen-rich air enters the lungs.The lungs of a bird do not inflate. Instead, as the bird inhales the posterior sacs inflate...."

Since it has already been stated that birds have air sacs and the paragraph goes onto explain the role these airsacs have in the respiratory system of birds, it is not entirely necassary to mention them at the start of the paragragh.

Unfortunately it is very difficult to write a clear explanation of how a bird's respiratory system works in a consice way without diagrams, which of course cannot be included with the entry. That is why the link to the page with diagrams etc is needed.

I think Gnomon's problem with the page loading may be an isolated case. The page has always loaded easily for me.

Hi Lanzababy. Since I left you with this entry to tidy up, I thought I should help out a little by trying to clear up those awkward opening sentences. This is a bit rough, but perhaps it may at least inspire you to something better than my clumsy effort:

"It has long been recognized that birds have a remarkable and far more efficient respiratory system than mammals. Originally it was believed this breathing mechanism was unique to birds, but as the fossil records of dinosaurs has grown, and new methods of analyzing those fossils have developed, there is evidence that dinosaurs shared the same respiratory system as birds."

My aplogies if I am treading on your toes a little here, but I would like to make your job a little easier for you if possible.