Armored Dinosaurs' Noses Kept Them Cool

Dogs pant. Humans sweat. Pigs roll in the mud. To keep cool in the Cretaceous forests, some dinosaurs breathed deeply. Paleontologists at Ohio University studied CT scans of the skulls of ankylosaurs - huge armor-plated dinosaurs. Using 3-D reconstructions, they determined that traveling though the creatures' long, convoluted nasal passages gave air more time and surface area to warm up to body temperature by drawing heat from blood vessels. The cooled blood then flowed to the...

© La Voix de l'Amérique - samedi 8 novembre 2014