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(ATHENS, Ohio — Oct. 17, 2014) A faculty member from the Ohio
University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine has contributed
to a significant new finding about dinosaur breathing. Lawrence M.
Witmer, Ph.D., who is an anatomy professor, Chang professor of
paleontology, and director of anatomical resources at the college,
was one of the authors of a study published online Oct. 14 in the
journal Anatomical Record. The lead author of the paper,
Jason M. Bourke, is a doctoral student in biology at Ohio
University.
In the new paper, the researchers describe how they used
three-dimensional modeling to make discoveries about not just how
dinosaurs breathed, but also how airflow in their noses helped them
cool their brains and detect odors.
Witmer serves as principal investigator on the National Science
Foundation’s
Visible
Interactive Dinosaur Project, which provided much of the funding
for the research.
Read more about this story on the Ohio University Office of
Research Communications Web site.
This is only the latest Heritage College contribution to dinosaur
science; in a recently published paper that garnered national media
attention, two college faculty members helped identify bones found
in a cliff wall in Tanzania as coming from a
new species of large dinosaur. |
