A Rostral Nostril for the Fossil
Discovery on Dinosaur Noses Could Have Big Impact

Listen to Richard Harris' report for All Things Considered

 View the dinosaur nostril photo gallery

The new "rostral" position of the nostrils on the sauropod dinosaur Diplodocus, according to research conducted by Lawrence Witmer. © Science/Painting by M.W. Skrepnick, under the direction of L.M. Witmer View the dinosaur nostril photo gallery

August 2, 2001 -- Paleontologists, who study fossils to piece together the fractured record of the history of life on Earth, may have gotten dinosaur nostrils all wrong. Until now.

An August 3rd article in Science magazine promises to put dinosaur noses on the map -- or, more specifically, in front of their long-gone faces, and not closer to the top of their heads. As NPR's Richard Harris discovered, dinosaur artists up until now had simply guessed where the nostril would appear on a dinosaur's snout.

But Lawrence Witmer at the college of osteopathic medicine at Ohio University decided to challenge those nostril assumptions. Dinosaur nostrils in particular had been neglected in the scientific literature.

Some dinosaur skulls have elaborate labyrinths of bone and substantial chambers in the snout. Some skulls also have huge openings -- up to two feet long -- to provide an opening for the nose. But the actual nostril positioning was in doubt.

This news will come as a shock to all those artists who have been drawing dinosaur nostrils high up and set back on the snouts of triceratops, duck-billed dinosaurs and brontosaurs. Witmer draws them right on the tip of the snout, just above the upper lip.

And the issue is more important that mere aesthetics -- there's some serious physiology at stake. Chris Broshu at the University of Iowa says with all that airflow, dinosaurs may have been able to use their noses to do more than just smell -- it may have helped air-condition the animal.

Witmer says it makes sense that the sense of smell and taste would be clustered together, along with the exquisite sense of touch that we could expect from dinosaur lips.

So the tip of the snout was full of sensory organs, just as it is for modern animals. Witmer says his discovery also helps reveal the function of the rest of the nose.

Web Resources:

• Science Magazine online

• Dinosauria, a Web site devoted to Dinosaurs

• Journal of Dinosaur Paleontology, a comprehensive index of recently published articles and sites

• Discovery Channel Fossil Zone, with mulitmedia treats like a simulated dinosaur roar...

• Jurassic Park Institute, a news and entertainment site related to the dinosaur movie trilogy

• Scientific American: Rebuilding the Lost World -- revisions of older assumptions about dinosaurs