Fisher said that two veterinarian experts have looked at the images and agreed that the chest mass is the fossil of a four-chambered heart. Developing a four-chambered heart and a high metabolic rate could have been essential to survival for dinosaurs like Willo, which would have been choice morsels for the big meat eaters, such Tyrannosaurs Rex, said Fisher. Coldblooded animals are sluggish in chilly weather and would have been easy prey. Horner said that because of the Willo study by North Carolina scientists, he and other researchers will now start doing CT scans on any intact dinosaur fossils they find. Among the effects of the heart discovery, said Horner, is a boost for the idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs, a theory that is becoming more widely accepted by paleontologists.
Birds also have four-chambered hearts.
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