THE FACE OF DIPLODOCUS: Nostril Placement in Sauropod Dinosaurs

In writing and illustrating our 2016 Johns Hopkins University Press book, The Sauropod Dinosaurs: Life in the Age of Giants, my coauthor Matthew J. Wedel and I sought to explain the most current ideas about the paleobiology and ecology of this enigmatic dinosaur group.

- Mark Hallett 2020

Besides the often contested issue of how sauropods held their necks and whether they could bipedally or tripodally reach high to browse, one topic we touched on was breathing. Here we discuss not the remarkable system of oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange in the sauropods’ birdlike unidirectional lungs, but the simple aspiration of air and the basic question of where the fleshy external nostrils (external nares) were placed on their heads. This obviously makes a huge difference in the appearance of the animals, and also has a direct relationship to a basic problem for sauropods when they became really huge: how to keep breathing while you have to drink.