That's a seriously good article; thinking of subscribing to The Atlantic for this and some of their wide ranging world political articles.

Puts me in mind of a couple of other evolutionary items: The incredible oxygenation achievements of birds in their modifications of lungs and airsacks to enable the metabolic energy they require to execute flight, presumably also a feature of dinosaur evolution since it is the current wisdom that birds are the current examples;
Also, the quite natural question as to where and how did the anus evolve? There has long been the anti-evolution argument that the eye coujld not evolve but had to be designed since so many disparate elements had to exist and work together to get the funtionality we now perceive in optical organs. A quirky movie with that as a plot element came out a few years ago: "I Origins".

Meanwhile, there have been serious articles out on the ability of the lower digestive tract to absorb oxygen and that this could actually feature in medical treatments when the lungs are compromised.