Dinosaur airheads - Euoplocephalus - skull with brain and crazy air way

Skull of the ankylosaur dinosaur Euoplocephalus tutus (AMNH FR 5405), revealing the brain and nasal cavity (olfactory region in red, airway in yellow). The arrow shows the tortuous airway. Rendered from CT scans using Amira and QuickTime by Ryan Ridgely, and labeled by Jason Bourke. For more on Euoplocephalus and dinosaur airheads, including PDFs of the 2008 Witmer & Ridgely article and a downloadable QuickTime version of this movie (http://bit.ly/9bvsep), visit http://www.oucom.ohiou.edu/dbms-witmer/DinoSinuses_main.htm . For more content like this, visit http://www.ohio.edu/witmerlab and http://www.facebook.com/witmerlab

Category:

Education

Tags:

• dinosaur
• CT scan
• ankylosaur
• Euplocephalus
• brain
• inner ear
• anatomy
• morphology
• respiration
• physiology
• smell
• olfaction
• paranasal sinus

[thegameguy15]

I guess being such a big animals with all of the armor would have made heat radiation pretty important.

Any idea what the nasal passages would make him sound like if they were used as a vocal resonator?

[witmerlab]

Indeed, the fact that the airway runs so close to big vascular canals suggests that dealing with heat was one of the factors. Likewise, the crazy convoluted airway couldn't help but have an impact on the resonant properties of any sounds produced. We gave about half a sentence to these ideas in the published article, but the story of ankylosaur snouts is not yet fully told. Stay tuned!

[thegameguy15]

I think i know something missing from the turntables... sound.

I think they could use a voice over.