Why Sauropod's Nostrils Aren't So Obvious
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ก.พ. 2025
- Brachiosaurus, Diplodocus, Argentinosaurus and many other sauropods are often depicted with nostrils high on their foreheads. It makes sense to assume this nostril position when looking at sauropod skulls, since their nasal openings are located on top of their skulls.
But, having nostrils on the forehead offers no anatomical purpose to sauropods. A closer analysis into dinosaur skulls has figured out that despite the position of their nasal openings, sauropods, like every other dinosaur, had nostrils on their snouts.
References:
[1] www.ncbi.nlm.n...
[2] web.archive.or...
[3] markwitton-com....
Public Domain Images (via Wikimedia Commons)
1. (Outdated restoration of Dipolodocus at SUMPHG) Motekov, CC BY-SA 4.0 creativecommon..., via Wikimedia Commons
2. (Diplodocus cknight) Charles R. Knight, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
3. (Strange Creatures of the Past - The Amphibious Dinosaur) Charles R. Knight, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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0:15
Aren't these supposed to be Brachiosaurus? And the art was made by Zdenek Burian btw.
They are apparently Brachiosaurus by Zdenek Burian, thanks for the correction! I didn't find more information about the painting other than the ones provided in the Wikimedia page (where I sourced the image).
I have seen several reconstructions of sauropods online having nostrils on their foreheads because of their openings. But I like that they have nostrils on their faces along with air sacs to communicate.
It's a good day when Factor Trace uploads.
Thanks, that's very nice to hear! :D
the editing in this video is beautiful just like every other video
Thank you!
This channel is criminally underrated
i can't describe how much i love these videos
Thanks! Glad you love them!
Amazing work, I love how professional and informative your videos are.
Thank you very much! I'm trying to focus more on quality than quantity
@@FactorTrace Completely understandable. It's what makes your content stand out. Just make sure you do whatever suits you.
This has got to be the quickest I've hit a subscribe button in my life. The information, clear and concise language, and incredibly executed graphic design and animation is so easy to understand and follow! Did you draw all of the illustrations yourself? If so then that's incredible! As a paleoartist, it helps to know the reasoning behind new reconstructions besides "Well everyone else is doing it so I guess I should too."
Also what do you use to edit? I'd guess After Effects but I could be wrong.
Thank you! I appreciate it.
Yes, apart from the vintage dinosaur paintings, I made all the illustrations for the video myself. And you're absolutely right, I use After Effects to animate (and Illustrator and Photoshop to make the graphic elements).
Well edited and informative, as always. Just amazing. It's so pleasant to watch!
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!
I'm falling in love with your videos, they are so well made!
Your videos are incredible! The script, narration, the easy-to-digest information, etc. Well done and thank you!
Thanks for watching! and you're welcome!
The animations are so good keep the good work!
Thanks! Sure will
This is amazing! Why has it got such little views? This is so well made, you've earned a subscriber
Thanks for subscribing!
I remember in the early 2,000s watching the original version of King Kong and seeing the sauropods being depicted as aquatic dinosaurs. They were constructed, scientifically speaking, so badly that I remember thinking to myself "Oh look! They added the lock ness monster to King Kong!" This nostril rediscovery really helps explain why the film makers had initially put the sauropods underwater. Thanks for another great video!
Yeah, dinosaur depictions in movies actually plays a very important rule in shaping the general public's view about them. The aquatic sauropods never actually held on after the mid 20th century within the paleo community, but modern cinema still sometimes get that wrong.
@@FactorTracesauropods did go in the water.
Think giant crocodilian noit aquatic elephants..
Discovered you through the dodo video, and got blown away by the quality of your content. Keep it up man, you’ll be famous one day!
Why would they even need to get their torsos underwater? If the air sacs make them float like hippos, I can totally see them taking advantage of a cool lake. Might even be a way to get parasites off them as the fish would like it, and their poop.
Float like hippos? Please tell me you're joking!
@@BryanJRiolo-q5h Maybe they mean “float like hippos” as in “don’t float much if at all” so that the Sauropod can easily jump up and down to shake parasites off.
But other parts of the comment seem to suggest otherwise to what I said
@DrakonBlake Most people think that hippos float quite well and can swim quite well. I used to think so too until quite recently.
It is known from fossil trackways that giant sauropods could swim quite well. As in reasonably deep water not just mud flats. Considering that it's been found out that sauropods had avian type breathing systems, I imagine they could swim very well.
Hippos are one of the only animals who don’t float 😭😭
Amazing video, thanks for the clarification
Thanks, and you're welcome!
i'd like to think that all that space would allow for a bigger nasal passage, in turn allowing for more efficient and easier breathing, definitely a necessity for something so large
Yeah, and if the fleshy nostril were located caudally, then the nasal passage would house a lot of narial apparatuses, which I'd argue would also improve their sense of smell.
@@FactorTraceAnd if sauropods had good color vision the tissues could be colorful or be flushed with blood seasonally like many birds
More videos! Your graphics are amazing!
I really hope you do something like whether dinosaurs had lips, cheeks, beaks, scales, filaments or laking of. We need to keep this magna opus of a channal alive!
Thanks for the suggestion, dinosaur soft tissue is a really interesting topic! And thanks, I'm still working on more videos!
@@FactorTrace I wonder what deep fried dodo would taste like.
Your videos are gold. Beautiful to watch and innovative.
Babe wake up, Factor Trace uploaded a new video
Your videos are Nat Geo level, I would say even better. Wish you success 😇
You should do a video on what is the biggest sauropod dinosaur.
Yeah, that's that will make an interesting video, I do plan to cover that topic in the future!
I loved the video!!!!
Do you have any videos on Brachiosaurus v. Giraffatitan by any chance?
4:06 the Brachiosaurus and Giraffatitan skulls are swapped.
I like to imagine Sauropods like brachiosaurus having inflatable air sacs above their nose, which is why the nasal opening is larger.
Fantastic videos!!! ♥
I hope you get more subs
Thanks!
Stay tuned, next year, we’ll say that they had nostrils on their vertebrates that led directly to their lungs allowing them to partially be submersed and because of the air pockets on their backs they were capable of floating while they grazed on the shallow water vegetation…
I loved the music in the first video, if you get other amazing sounds u will get more views
Thanks! Now I'm using Epidemic sounds as my music library, I hope the music in my recent videos are just as good.
Id like to think they were just massive openings almostnlike there was no flesh there at all. Itd make them really creepy but in an interesting way
I think the massive holes in the head were possibly used as air sacs that could inflate.
You sound pissed off in this one. like, "god, can't believe i have to fucking say this," hahahahaha
I wasn't pissed, more annoyed like, "this has to be addressed because they keep getting it wrong in pop culture" 😂
I think I don’t agree with the nostrils of sauropods on the tip of their snouts and nostrils belong on the top of their head so they can breathe without getting vegetation stuck inside of their nostrils!!
Regardless, I certainly don't think we should morphologically project a Sauropod's nostril position to that of most animals today; the later members were unique and to themselves alone.
Comparing extant animals to extinct ones is half of how we do paleontology actually, the other half is analyzing discovered remains.
The forehead nostril position is the remnants of incorrect old dinosaur reconstructions
@@FactorTrace Certainly not. There are some terrestrial animals with nostril openings positioned closer to the eyes. Let's not assume all Sauropods weren't the same either. Based on noses work, it's seems plausible enough the nostrils were positioned at the front of their cavity as suggested with reconstructions of Camarasaurus.
Do You know of any reserch that relates nousetrols edith pulmonar capacity? The length of trakea and lungs capacity migth have an influence in their size, and in the positions.
Jus forget making the dino vides and make some videos on mammals Birds and other prehistoric animals okay please 🥺
Hi! Yeah, I'm currently working on a video about the thylacine/Tasmanian tiger, and more videos of extinct animals from the Holocene Extinction series will follow soon.
I hope to create an Arabic dub because I love your channel and I hope you will put an Arabic dub
the sculs of the saurapods they only found part of the sculls. the rest are reconstruction. it mean part of the scull is fake.
Je ne suis pas très sur que les dinosaures Sauropode pouvaient respirer les feuilles des arbres comme les mammifères herbivores je crois qu’on devrait vérifier avec les tortue
The more you know
2:06 the difference is that giraffes and paraceratherium have well developed lips that can prevent debris from entering, also brachiosaurus most likely fed on conifers with small needle shaped leaves, so they could be a hazard, while modern day giraffes feed on broadleaf trees, also a sauropod's way of feeding is shearing leaves off with its teeth which produces way more debris than a giraffe licking the leaves off a branch
just my point of view by the way
That's a good argument bestuan. However, I still don't think it justifies the nostril placement on the forehead enough. I think sauropods also had lips that would have contained the debris inside the mouth as they were eating.
Makes me think of the soft tissue on the heads of beluga whales.
2:15 Okay, well following that logic Elephants would never be reconstructed with a trunk if Proboscideans ever died out. Just like with Dunkleosteus's size adjustment, you cannot take modern animals & assume this extinct animal follows similar trends in unrelated taxa. There could be other reasons they have high-positioned nostrils, but having to invent entire soft tissue structures to make their nostrils in a more convenient spot is sloppy at best & intellectually dishonest at worst. Paleontology may be a meme field within Biology, but that doesn't excuse dogmatism nor shoddy methodology.
It is actually the opposite, inferring the appearance of the living animal based on the skeletal structure alone is the bad scientific practice, it emerged in the early days of paleontology when the scientific standard was still low. It's a horrible trend that kept plaguing the field until now.
Sauropods. Didn't exist as far as I'm concerned.
Btw. I'm not saying all dinosaurs just saurpods
An elephant eats 150 kg per day and spends 18 hours eating per day
An Argentinosaurus needs 850 kg per day
So please explain how many hours it would need to be eating per day? Because upscaling it would seem like 100 hours eating per 24 hours period
So what am I missing?
Did vegetation back then contain 10 times as much nutrition?
Please explain. Because based on what I know about elephants. Saurpods seem impossible. Biologically.
I have not found an explanation so far🤷♂️🤷♂️😊
Sauropods ate way way faster than any elephant. Elephants have to chew before digesting.
Sauropods just rake all the leaves off of trees and swallow without chewing. They skip chewing and spend their time filling their stomach, while stones help their huge digestive tract.
Basically elephants chew and then swallow and digest, but sauropods swallow and digest at the same time
@@MastaBaitaAmbatukam saurpods have a harder time digesting. Chewing and saliva break down food before entering the stomach . This means it would take way way longer than an elephant for the gut to break down food. Your defence is flawed and speculation
@@davepegington9066 Do you know that there are many herbivores that don't chew? There isn't anything their digestion lacks. The food gets plenty of saliva the way down its throat and is ground up by rocks and acid in the stomach. And big sauropods have a way bigger digestive tract than elephants that can absorb more nutrients.
So the sauropod doesn't lose anything from not chewing, it just chews with its stomach with the help of rocks. And it still swallows more food at the same time
@@MastaBaitaAmbatukam i know c there are many dinosaurs that c are SPECULATED not to chew. But they v don't need the gigantic of food a saurpod does either.
I don't buy that swallowing stones helps either. That does with small animals like birds. But wouldn't with an animal with the stomach the size of a car .
Not chewing doesn't take anything away? Don't talk such rot. The first animals evolved to bite and then chew before they even left the sea.
For no other reason than it was an advantage.
For example saurpods. SPECULATED not to raise their young. But. eggs then abandon them, as one of the consequences for constantly needing to be on the move and feed.
The mortality rate of baby saurpods was absurdly high. Even worse than sea turtles. (According to David Attenborough)
So YES not chewing IS NEGATIVE
@@davepegington9066 Search up gastrolith. Then you'll understand
Also, you are wrong. Tetrapods are ancestrally unable to chew. The only tetrapod group that generally can chew are mammals. Other tetrapods lack horizontal jaw mobility. The only dinosaurs, extinct or living able to chew were hadrosaurs, and even they couldn't chew side to side. Only grinding tooth batteries together vertically.
Also, if you actually believe "sauropods" are real, then how is that possible? In science, researchers are awarded for criticizing and debunking other people's work. No ideas are beyond scrutiny. I know sauropods were real, because if they weren't real, then some scientists would've made work explaining how they aren't real to respond to other scientists.
Also, you realize that not all sauropods are giant, right? Some dwarf sauropods were buffalo sized as adults. Are they real? What about the early, bipedal sauropods that were much smaller? Like plateosaurus. They are in the sauropod clade as well. Your view doesn't make sense
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So, when is the Arizona esc video coming out? Any rough estimate?
I haven't actually planned on making any yet, but when I do I'll make sure to let you know.
Thanks. Hopefully no more species go extinct during the time inbetween this comment being posted and your next video!
Back. Just a reminder to well, remind me.
@@FactorTrace I hope you are doing well!
Yet another reminder. I hope it’s going well!
Nice time😂
Regardless, though nostrils are not sauropods, are still awesome animals