Big dinosaurs kept their cool
Body temperature of long-gone beasts resembled that of mammals
How do you take a dinosaur’s temperature? Very carefully.
By counting chemical bonds in 150-million-year-old fossilized teeth, scientists have done the paleontological equivalent of jamming a thermometer up a giant reptile’s rear end. Reporting online June 23 in Science, the researchers say the huge, four-legged dinosaurs known as sauropods would have registered a body temperature similar to that of any modern Homo sapiens.
Barring a nurse’s visit to Jurassic Park, the work provides perhaps the best glimpse yet at dinosaurs’ internal temperature, a key factor in understanding their metabolism. The findings measure some 4 to 7 degrees Celsius cooler than one theory of dinosaur growth has suggested.