Big Dinosaurs had warm, not hot, body temperatures

[n2doc]

Big dinosaurs kept their cool
Body temperature of long-gone beasts resembled that of mammals By Alexandra Witze Web edition : 2:42 pm Text Size


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.

“This approach to the old issue of warm- versus cold-bloodedness has the potential to open a new door into this controversy,” says Luis Chiappe, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County who was not involved in the research.
more

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/331808/title/Big_dinosaurs_kept_their_cool__