Breathing life into bone A new specimen of a South African dinosaur sheds light on how its family evolved a unique way of breathing. The scientific article describing the discovery was published in the eLife international scientific journal this week. The fossil was found in 2009 in the Eastern Cape by study co-author, Dr Billy de Klerk of the Albany Museum. An international team of scientists has used high-powered X-rays to show how an extinct dinosaur breathed. The team, led by South African PhD student Viktor Radermacher, were able to virtually reconstruct a new skeleton of the plant-eating dinosaur Heterodontosaurus tucki in unprecedented detail. They found surprising features of its ribs and pelvis that point to a strange style of breathing, where a muscle attached to the hips pulled on the lungs to expand and contract them.