Physiology
Scipionyx is considered one of the most important fossil vertebrates ever discovered, after a long and painstaking "autopsy" revealed the unique fossilisation of portions of its internal organs. It is believed Scipionyx lived in a region filled with shallow lagoons. These bodies of water were oxygen deficient, leading to the well-preserved Scipionyx specimen, much like the fine fossil preservation seen in Germany's Archaeopteryx. Parts of the windpipe, intestines, liver, blood vessels, cartilage, horn sheaths, tendons and muscles were fossilised in the fine limestone. The specimen's liver was preserved in the form of a red heamatite halo retaining the shape it had when the animal was alive. The find has great importance because the relative positions of internal organs of dinosaurs could only be guessed at before this discovery. The holotype specimen thus provides unique direct information about the physiology of non-avian dinosaurs, especially regarding the digestion, the respiration and the ontogenesis.
Read more about this topic: Scipionyx, Paleobiology
Famous quotes containing the word physiology:
“I have more in common with a Mexican man than with a white woman.... This opinion ... chagrins women who sincerely believe our female physiology unequivocally binds all women throughout the world, despite the compounded social prejudices that daily affect us all in different ways. Although women everywhere experience life differently from men everywhere, white women are members of a race that has proclaimed itself globally superior for hundreds of years.”
—Ana Castillo (b. 1953)
“Now the twitching stops. Now you are still. We are through with physiology and theology, physics begins.”
—Alfred Döblin (1878–1957)
“The world moves, but we seem to move with it. When I studied physiology before ... there were two hundred and eight bones in the body. Now there are two hundred and thirty- eight.”
—Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)