Reseachers in dinosaurs’ temperature breakthrough

temperature of dinosaurs, first of its kind and shedding new light on dinosaur physiology.
“This is like being able to stick a thermometer in an animal that has been extinct for 150 million years,” Robert Eagle, lead author of the study, wrote in a paper posted online on Thursday by the Science Express.
Using 11 dinosaur teeth that were dug up in Tanzania and US states of Wyoming and Oklahoma, the researchers measured the concentrations of rare isotopes in a mineral found in the teeth to determine the body temperatures of dinosaurs. The lower the temperature, the higher the number of isotopes.
Using the technique, they determined that the brachiosaurus had a temperature of about 38,2 degrees Celsius, while the camarasaurus’ temperature was about 35,7 degrees Celsius.
Based on the findings, the researchers concluded that some dinosaurs were warm-blooded, meaning that they were fast, nimble creatures.
“Nobody has used this approach to look at dinosaur body temperatures before, so our study provides a completely different angle on the longstanding debate about dinosaur physiology,” said Eagle.
Researchers previously reached estimates about how fast dinosaurs could run by studying the spacing of tracks, growth rates of bones and the ratio of predators to prey. But those methods often led to contradictory conclusions by different researchers.
With the new findings, scientists will better understand the behavior of dinosaurs, Caltech researchers said.
“We’re getting at body temperature through a line of reasoning that I think is relatively bullet proof, provided you can find well-preserved samples,” said John Eiler, a co-author of the study and Caltech professor of geochemistry.
“The body temperatures we’ve estimated now provide a key piece of data that any model of dinosaur physiology has to be able to explain,” said Aradhna Tripati, an assistant professor at University of California, Los Angeles and visiting researcher in geochemistry at Caltech.
As a result, the data can help scientists test physiological models to explain how these organisms lived. – Xinhua.