Dinosaurs May Have Had The Same Sleeping Patterns As Humans

(Photo : Getty Images/Carl Court) Humans could have more in common with lizards -- and even dinosaurs -- than we may have imagined.

Humans could have more in common with lizards -- and even dinosaurs -- than we may have imagined.

A new study suggests that reptiles display REM and slow-wave sleep patterns just like mammals and birds - a pattern that may even have occurred in dinosaurs, writes The Huffington Post.

The findings of the study suggest that REM and slow-wave sleep patterns could have evolved with the first amniotes that lived 300 million years ago, and are the common ancestor of mammals, birds and reptiles.

Researchers implanted a type of silicon probe in the forebrain regions of five Australian bearded dragons in order to monitor brain activity as the reptiles slept.  

Researchers also monitored the lizards' eye movement as they slept, using infrared cameras and computerized video analysis.

The recordings showed that the reptiles engage in two phases of sleep: low frequency with high-amplitude brain activity and high brain activity with rapid eye movements.

"[The study provided] extremely strong evidence that the patterns of structure of sleep that we've seen in a broad range of species is reflective of something that evolved very early in vertebrate evolution and is shared across many - perhaps all - vertebrates," Dr. Daniel Margoliash, a professor of organismal biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago who was not involved in the study, told The New York Times.

However, while the finding show that reptiles have similar sleeping patterns to humans, this does not suggest that humans, reptiles and birds are more closely related.

Researchers are interested in finding out more about how dinosaurs and other creatures sleep in order to answer questions about the purpose of sleep rhythms and whether they play a role in information transfer between the brain areas and consolidating memory, Dr. Laurent told the Huffington Post.

Research could also show how modern sleeping patterns emerged and the reasoning behind it.

The study was published in the journal Science.