Dinosaurs’ sensitive snouts enabled courtship ‘face stroking’, study suggests

Fossilised skull scans reveal neurovascular canal that might have enabled precision-feeding, and face-biting 'to make a point'

Dinosaurs' faces might have been much more sensitive than previously thought and may have helped them feed more carefully or woo potential mates, according to new research.

Experts from the University of Southampton used advanced X-ray and 3D-imaging techniques to look inside the fossilised skull of Neovenator salerii - a large carnivorous land-based dinosaur found on the Isle of Wight, and found evidence that it possessed an extremely sensitive snout of a kind previously only associated with aquatic feeders.