How Did Dinosaurs Hear The World? Alligators Give Us Clues

(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."