Scientists have discovered a way to take the temperature of the dinosaurs, and it is almost equal to that of humans. Obviously you can not just put a thermometer under the tongue of a giant creature that has been extinct for millions of years.
But the closest thing to that is studying the fossil teeth, which may reflect body temperature.
The scientists found that Brachiosaurus had a temperature of 38.2 degrees Celsius (100.8 Fahrenheit), while the Camarasaurus was about 36.8 C (98.3 F). The average temperature of a human is 37 C (98.6 F). The amount of carbon and oxygen that are integrated into the enamel of the teeth varies with body temperature, and so the researchers could determine the temperature of the dinosaurs.
Their study, published online Thursday by the journal Science, is not the last word in the debate over whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded like modern mammals or cold blooded and require external heat sources to be active as lizards. When they were first discovered, the most accepted theory was that moved unhurriedly and were cold-blooded, but in recent years, the consensus favors the warm blood, which would allow them to be more active, as the raptors of films "Jurassic Park".
"Our analysis allows us to rule that may have been cold, such as crocodiles," said lead researcher Robert A. Eagle, California Institute of Technology in a statement.
But he added that "this does not necessarily mean that these large dinosaurs had a fast metabolism, such as mammals and birds might have been (...). gigantotermos and keep warm because they were too big."
A huge body mass easily keeps a constant temperature, explained co-author Thomas Tuetken, University of Bonn, Germany.
His research focused on sauropods, the largest dinosaurs, and the researchers explained that animals of this size can retain body heat even with a relatively low metabolism, simply because they are very large. Brachiosaurus weighed about 40 tons, while the Camarasaurus reached 15 tons. Both creatures lived about 150 million years.
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