Study shows huge armored dinosaurs battled overheating with nasal air-conditioning


Being a gigantic dinosaur presented some challenges, such as overheating in the Cretaceous sun and frying your brain. Researchers from Ohio University and NYITCOM at Arkansas State show in a new article in PLOS ONE that the heavily armored, club-tailed ankylosaurs had a built-in air conditioner in their snouts.

"The huge bodies that we see in most dinosaurs must have gotten really hot in warm Mesozoic climates," said Jason Bourke, Assistant Professor at the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine at Arkansas State and lead author of the study. "Brains don't like that, so we wanted to see if there were ways to protect the brain from cooking. It turns out the nose may be the key."

https://phys.org/news/2018-12-huge-a...nasal.html#jCp