Re: Trex as a good smeller

["Richard W. Travsky" <rtravsky@uwyo.edu>]

On Tue, 4 Jul 2006, Scott wrote:
> I've wondered if really good smellers might be able to smell
> directionally--one possible explanation for the slits in the sides of dog
> noses, e.g. Directional smelling, like 3-D vision, would make location of
> dinners easier, whether carcasses or prey. It would seem possible to test
> this via MRI. Does anyone know of work along these lines?

Yes and no. Mammals and humans at least, don't know about other species.

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/08/29_smell.shtml

Though humans may never match the tracking ability of dogs, we apparently 
have the ability to sniff out and locate odors, according to a new study 
by scientists from the University of California, Berkeley.

Student volunteers presented with odors to one nostril or the other could 
reliably discern where the odor was coming from, and functional magnetic 
resonance images of their brains showed that the brain is set up to pay 
attention to the difference between what the left and right nostrils 
sense, much the way it can localize sounds by contrasting input from the 
ears.

"It has been very controversial whether humans can do egocentric 
localization, that is, keep their head motionless and say where the 
spatial source of an odor is," said study coauthor Noam Sobel, associate 
professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and a member of the campus's Helen 
Wills Neuroscience Institute. "It seems that we have this ability and 
that, with practice, you could become really good at it."
...