And I thought it was just because they were too big to fit on the ark! J
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'Lack of deep sleep led to dinosaurs' demise'
RHIANNON EDWARD DINOSAURS were most likely killed off because they
never got a good night's sleep, scientists have claimed. Giant meteorites from outer space, fire storms, tidal
waves and an ice age have all been suggested by experts to explain the demise
of T-Rex and other giant dinosaurs.
However, the latest theory to explain their extinction claims they did not
survive because their reptilian sleeping patterns meant their brains did not
learn new skills properly. Unlike mammals and birds, reptiles are unable to
experience slow wave sleep, the type of sleep believed to be responsible for
boosting memories, especially those connected to performing new tasks. As a result, reptiles are much more limited in the
type of complex behaviour they can experience than other animals such as
mammals and birds. The implication of new research by Niels Rattenborg,
of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Slow wave - or deep - sleep leads to enhancements in
both learning and physical performance. It effectively shuts down the parts of
the brain that have learned new skills and allows this learning to become
consolidated without interruption. Without this crucial ability it could be that, when
the earth experienced huge climatic changes towards the end of the era of the
dinosaurs, they were unable to pick up sufficient new tricks to learn their way
out of extinction. The research also shows that, although birds and
mammals appear to have developed the same brain structures and, importantly, the
same series of connections between structures that allow slow wave sleep to
take place, these developments must have happened independently. Despite the common ancestry of birds and reptiles
among the dinosaurs, regarding sleep at least it is in fact birds and mammals
that have more in common in terms of brain structure and function. The paper is published by Elsevier in its journal
Brain Research Bulletin. |
- [TruthTalk] Lack of Sleep Led to Dinosaurs' Demise ShieldsFamily