Wookieepedia:Featured article queue/August 8, 2010

The Nosaurians were a sentient, bipedal, reptilian species native to the planet New Plympto in the Core Worlds. A Nosaurian was easily recognized by a row of long horns, a covering of tough scales, and a beakful of sharp teeth. Members of the species had the ability to produce a brief flash of light from inside their mouths, a knack they used for silent, long-distance communication. Nosaurians were colorblind, although few found this bothersome.

Their language's phonemes consisted of hisses, barks, and warbles, and its syntax commonly used metaphors related to weather, nature, and the seasons. They were capable of speaking Basic yet generally chose not to. When on their homeworld, they had an inexplicable ability to tell when the sun was setting and an overwhelming urge to "sing it down" by braying. This behavior persisted offworld, but the disturbance in a Nosaurian's internal rhythms often brought it on at inopportune times with no real tie to New Plympto's day–night cycle.

Nosaurians were naturally even-tempered. However, a long history of what they viewed as marginalization and exploitation at the hands of Humans left them bitter and angry. This began soon after the Nosaurians met their first offworlders, the Corellians. These Human neighbors became enmeshed in New Plympto's trade of rikknit eggs, a valuable component in ji rikknit and other recreational substances. As the rikknit population on New Plympto plummeted and the Galactic Republic imposed sanctions on the trade, the economy crumbled. The Nosaurians saw little choice but to join the Confederacy of Independent Systems. After the group's defeat in the Clone Wars, the Nosaurians tried to carry on the fight, only to be crushed by the 501st Legion and enslaved by the Galactic Empire. Decades later, when they opposed an invasion by beings known as Yuuzhan Vong, the aggressors unleashed a deadly virus on their homeworld and rendered it uninhabitable.

Nosaurians who made their names on New Plympto included the resistance leaders General Rootrock and Fefar Blackeye. However, economic hardship and enslavement forced many Nosaurians to emigrate over the centuries. Some gravitated toward thrill-seeking professions, as exemplified by the podracer pilot Clegg Holdfast. Others drifted among the galactic fringe, as in the case of Bomo Greenbark, who left his homeworld searching for his family after the end of the Clone Wars.