Terrible T-Rex had a fine-tuned sense of smell, say Alberta researchers

CALGARY - Southern Alberta researchers have discovered T-Rex had a fine-tuned sense of smell that firms up an evolutionary link with birds.
Long dubbed merely a scavenger, the fearsome predator followed its nose to live prey, says Darla Zelenitsky, a University of Calgary paleontologist and Francois Therrien, curator of the Royal Tyrrell Museum.
"It was through CAT scanning and measuring we looked at 21 different species," said Zelenitsky of the study of a variety of dinosaurs' olfactory bulbs, or the brain portion linked to sense of smell.
While herbivores and omnivores had less developed smell capabilities, T-Rex's was sharp enough to enable it to stalk live food at night, said Zelenitsky.
"The small guys, the raptor as well, had a very keen sense of smell," said Zelenitsky, standing next to the cast of a 67-million-year-old skull of a juvenile T-Rex unearthed in Montana.
"This is the only work done to quantify this."
The team also studied the ancient bird Archaeopteryx, which they found also dispelled notions that birds had only limited sniffing capabilities.
"It's significant because birds were thought to be all eyesight," said Zelenitsky of the species that dates back 140 million years.
"At least primitive birds had a sense of smell comparable to meat-eating dinosaurs."
The primitive bird - discovered in Germany - has long been linked to dinosaurs.
"It does share a lot of features with meat-eating dinosaurs," said Zelenitsky.
The Albertans' work has been published in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.