A team pathologists and biologists from Missouri, Ohio, and Florida discovered that the king of dinosaurs seemed to have air conditioning in his head.
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Casey M Holliday – one of the study authors – says that it was a strangeness in the anatomy of head muscles in crocodiles that was the first clue. Crocodiles have a muscle on their head that was thoughts was there for biting. But its somewhat illogically distorted. It diverts from the jaw, twists 90 degrees just to be stretched along with the upper cranial vault.
The real purpose of the muscle was discovered using a Thermo camera which turns heat into visible light. Scientists noticed something interesting on pictures of crocodiles from a zoo in Florida. When the lizards were getting cold, large hot spots started to appear on their heads. On top of their head and exactly where the strange muscle is localized. This area is also highly perfused. But when it hot during the day and thus the crocodile is warm as well these spots no longer glow on thermovision.
The arrangement and placement of protrusions used to anchor muscles are very similar in crocodiles and Tyrannosaurus rex. And he also had those areas highly perfused which is further evidence that the muscles there had a lot of access to blood. This led the scientists to think that even the ancient cousin of crocodiles had an internal thermostat taking care of the temperature of its brain.
Sometimes we forget that blood isn't there only to provide nutrients and oxygen throughout the body. It's also a cooling (and warming) liquid that brings comfort to brain neurons so they can perform at their best all the time.
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