From Alex Bowman, Glasgow, UK
In your interview with Dave Hone, he says that “birds are literally dinosaurs”. It is likely that the physical characteristics of birds that facilitate flying – lighter, stronger bones and more efficient lungs that have unidirectional air flow and sacs that act like bellows – are also characteristics that in dinosaurs led to huge sizes. Birds also have smaller, tighter neurons, which mean some birds are smart despite seemingly small brain capacity, and so perhaps dinosaurs were smart, too. It’s often said that dinosaurs evolved into birds, but considering the above, perhaps dinosaurs evolved from an originally flying animal (2 May, p 40).
