
Fossil Focus: The Archosaur Respiratory System — Or — Breathing Life into Dinosaurs
by Robert Brocklehurst*1
Introduction and background
Dinosaurs fascinate people more than almost any other group of fossil animals, and the general public is interested in many open questions on dinosaur biology. How fast could dinosaurs run? Were they warm blooded? If they had feathers, does that mean they could fly? These questions focus on dinosaur metabolism and movement, both of which are intimately linked with the respiratory system, because breathing — the ability to take in air, extract oxygen from it and then expel it from the body along with waste carbon dioxide— sets a fundamental upper limit on how much activity an organism is capable of.
How did dinosaurs breathe? That’s probably not a question palaeontologists get asked as often as the others. Breathing is something we a