When they unwound the nasal crazy straws in digital space, the passages, stretched end to end, were 1.4 to 2 times as long as the dinosaurs' skulls. Thanks to CT scans of fossilized skulls that retained soft tissue, the scientists reconstructed the passageways and blood vessels of two armored dinosaur species. Bourke, who conducted this work as part of his graduate research at Ohio University, is the first person to use computational fluid dynamics to model dinosaur nose tissues. Ruger Porter, a postdoctoral researcher in Witmer's lab, recently created a detailed computer model to follow heat as it passes through the animals' noses. It wouldn't take much to fry an ankylosaur noggin.īourke and Witmer, along with Wm. Not only were they bulky, which means they accumulated lots of body heat, but their smallish brains had a high ratio of surface area to volume, which means the heads could gain or lose heat readily. The armored dinosaurs must have been particularly vulnerable. 'Neural structures really don't like undergoing rapid changes in temperature,' Bourke said. Most vertebrate animals must maintain their bodies within a narrow band of temperatures.įor smaller animals, especially those in cold climates, thermoregulation is often viewed as preventing heat loss. But large animals, who hold in lots of heat, have the opposite problem.ĭelicate organs like brains are particularly important to keep cool. There was a third possible explanation, which biologists call thermoregulation. Perhaps the convolutions aided vocalizations, or gave the animals a superior sense of smell. No one knew what these nasal loops were for.

Using a CT scanner - the same technology as found in medical centers - Witmer tracked long, twisty airways that curled like 'crazy straws,' Bourke said. What the paleontologists found, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One, can explain how these walking tanks avoided boiling their brains under the prehistoric sun. Witmer at Ohio University, digitally pried open an ankylosaur skull. Or, at least, they hadn't, until some of Bourke's colleagues, led by Lawrence M.

Bourke, a vertebrate paleontologist at the New York Institute of Technology. Not the armored dinosaurs, with their boxy and small heads.Įven dinosaur fans 'don't usually think much about' these skulls, said Jason M. Other dinosaurs have ornate frills and crests or jaws full of banana-size chompers. Their heads, in contrast to their backs, lack drama.

Ankylosaurus walking with dinosaurs