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Caltech Scientists Measure Dinosaur Body Temp
damn_registrars writes "Using rare isotope ratios, a geology team at CalTech has determined body temperatures of sauropod dinosaurs. Their work finds temperatures that are roughly in line with modern mammals for body temperature. However, as the authors point out, this does not on its own confirm dinosaurs to be entirely warm-blooded, as they may have kept these temperatures by sheer mass. The peer-reviewed paper is available online in PNAS. You can also get the article free through pubmed."
You'd think the reason this took so long was because they had to fabricate a thermometer large enough, but in fact the real hold up was convincing a grad student to stick that thermometer up the dinosaur's ass.
. . . that big a rectal thermometer?
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That is all.
So I suppose it would make sense that their supposed ancestors have some warm blood in them too.
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Seriously? PNAS??? Who thought that that would be a good name?
I wonder if large land animals have to be warm blooded to function. One would think if a large dinosaur was cold blooded it would take a full day of sun to warm up all that mass, then when it was finally warm enough, it would be too dark to do anything useful.
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Were dinosaurs slow and lumbering, or quick and agile? It depends largely on whether they were cold or warm blooded. When dinosaurs were first discovered in the mid-19th century, paleontologists thought they were plodding beasts that had to rely on their environments to keep warm, like modern-day reptiles.
The writer is a moron.
No those paleontologists didn't fucking think that. The only damn reason the T. Rex in the American Museum of Natural History was mounted upright like that was because it was too damn heavy to mount with the backbone horizontal using the technology of the day.
Why the hell is there this general belief that people today are SOOO much smarter than people in the past?
If in doubt, clone one.
Thanks in advance.
Yours In Science.
Yours In Novosibirsk,
Kilgore Trout, Ph. D.
Yo momma is so fat she heats the whole city by sheer mass.
Donate free food here
I'm *pretty* sure that the time constant for post-mortem dinosaur temperature decay is less than a million years, but then again, I'm no paleontologist (aka biologist who failed organic and just went in the field because they like animals).
Ahhhh, that felt better.
The point about body mass, if it's not clear, is that metabolism produces huge amounts of heat. When we digest food, about 50% of the energy that's released in converting complex molecules to carbon dioxide and water is released as heat. A huge animal can keep warm just from that. Mammals and birds maintain their temperature in a very narrow range. However, it's more complicated than just that would indicate: hibernating mammals (and one species of bird that hibernates) allow their temperature to fluctuate with the outside temperature. Likewise, there are reptiles that do some things to reduce their temperature variation, by seeking sunlight or shade, which is a type of active regulation. One current theory about dinosaurs and the evolution of feathers is that they showed up primarily as a thermoregulation system, providing insulation (particularly in rain) but allowing the animals to fluff their feathers to increase temperature losses to again actively thermoregulate.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
We need to handle this with all the scientific methodology used in the Global Warming controversy.
1. State that dinosaurs are cold blooded, and were killed by man,
2. Ban all funding to schools that teach otherwise.
3. Ridicule all opposing views, especially if they have testable theories.
4. Take a vote of those remaining, especially the phone sanitizers.
5. You now have a consensus! Win!
Looks like the researchers forgot that in the time of the dinosaurs, the temprature of the planet was significantly warmer.
Warm blooded? The next thing they are going to tell us is that dinosaurs had feathers.
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
Why hasn't anyone mentioned PNAS yet? Right on par with the thermometer jokes.
After all those years, I'd think they'd be room temperature by now.
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Have gnu, will travel.
Even if they could somehow measure ambient temperature for the teeth... I don't know about you, but my teeth spend much of their live with cold drinks.
Teeth are outside of the thermoregulation zone, just like your skin, hair, nails... Also, if their metabolism effectively turns on and off between hot and cold, it's easy to surmise that the teeth would only grow in the daytime.
Room Temperature Perhaps?