Ed. Note: Leonardo has only been on display in Dinosaur Mummy
CSI: Cretaceous Science Investigation for a few weeks – but
we’ve already gotten a ton of fascinating questions from
visitors. In this post, Dr. Bakker answers them. If you have a
question about Leonardo – or anything on exhibit at the Houston
Museum of Natural Science – send it to email@example.com and
we’ll post the answer here. Dinosaur Mummy CSI presents scans of
Leonardo that show gut contents and even a possible heart. Does
Leonardo have lungs preserved? There are some curious iron
concretions revealed by the x-rays here but nothing definite.
Duck-bill dinosaurs do not have hollowed-out bones of the sort
we see in birds and raptors and tyrannosaurs. Therefore we don’t
expect that they had the very small lungs and big air chambers
in the body cavity characteristic of modern birds. The lungs
would be tucked up high in the chest, covered by rib numbers
3,4,5,6 – if the lungs were like those of birds and crocodiles.
The drawings of Leonardo in th