(Credit: AmeliAU/shutterstock) How did dinosaurs hear? Researchers now have an idea thanks to alligators. In a new study, researchers have discovered that American alligators process sounds the same way that barn owls and chickens do. And because birds and reptiles last shared a common ancestor nearly 250 million years ago, the finding means the shared hearing strategy originated before dinosaurs existed. "We know so little about dinosaurs," Catherine Carr, a biologist at the University of Maryland in College Park, who led the new research, said in a statement. "Comparative studies such as this one, which identify common traits extending back through evolutionary time add to our understanding of their biology."
Sound reaches each ear at different times. The brain uses this lag to figure out where in space the sound came from. In birds, the brain creates a map from this time difference to pinpoint a sound’s location. Unlike birds, ...
