Ridiculous Brachiosaur Concept

I'm categorizing this as "fantasy" because it mayaswell be, it's such a baseless speculation. I didn't use a reference for the skull, either, I just scrawled it from memory - so the size and orientation of the skull openings is wayyyy off. The general outline holds true though.

Basically, ever since I first read about the "sauropod trunk" hypothesis years back, I've been sold on the idea that some sauropods must have had extensive soft-tissue features attached to their skulls. Now, the idea of brachiosaurs walking about with long elephantine trunks flopping in the breeze has been received rather... poorly... by experts and dinosaur-fans alike, and great measures have been taken to try and disprove the idea. And although some of the counterevidence does make good points, none of it answers the question that the trunk hypothesis was put forward as an explanation for in the first place - WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THOSE GIANT NOSTRILS?

So this is my (admittedly ridiculous) take on the problem. The huge nares supported an internal cartilegenous septum, and there was a large moist chamber with a convoluted passage winding between the internal airways and the external nostril opening. The bony arch also served as an attachment for muscles that controlled the most obvious feature here, the huge honkin' elephant-ear-style flaps. My conjecture is that the entire set-up - giant nareal openings, moist nasal chamber, blood-vessel-rich skin flaps - was a thermoregulation adapation, excess body heat being dumped back into the environment while the dry air of their Pangaean habitat was moistened before coming into contact with the respiratory tissues. Instead of a "trunk", I've given it a muscular lip much like that of a black rhinoceros - so it wouldn't be "tearing off" branches for food, but simply gathering them tightly to make the ripping motions with its teeth more effective.

Another possible use of the nasal flaps would be as fly-swishers to keep hypothetical botflies or other nasties away from the soft tender eyes and nostrils - seeing as the creature wouldn't have a limb handy to bat such horrors away, and since a vulnerable food source rarely goes unexploited by *some* manner of hungry critter... really, this is a shameless exercise in imagination, but I make no apologies.

Thanks to Nemo Ramjet [link] for inspiring me to finally sketch out this monstrosity - the idea has been in my brain for nearly half a decade now, I just always thought "I suck at dinosaurs" and so never tried to draw it. (I *do* suck at dinosaurs, but ehhhhh who cares)