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  1. #1
    Bogertophis's Avatar
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    A commonly held belief about dinosaurs may be all wrong

    I think this is interesting...& I'm still trying to wrap my head around fluffy dinosaurs with feathers...? It's amazing what they can tell from egg shells!
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    https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/17/world...scn/index.html

    Did dinosaur blood run hot or cold? Their eggshells may hold a clue


    By Katie Hunt, CNN
    Updated 11:28 AM ET, Mon February 17, 2020






    (CNN)The image of cold-blooded, scaly, reptilian dinosaurs imprinted in our imaginations by movies like "Jurassic Park" may never have existed.

    We already know that many dinosaurs were feathered like birds and brightly colored. They may also have sounded like them too -- making a cooing sound similar to a dove rather than roaring.
    Now, new research from Yale University suggests that the blood that coursed through their giant frames would have been warm, rather than the cold-blooded creatures we traditionally assumed them to be. The findings come from an analysis of fossilized eggshells.


    Fluffy dinosaurs used to live at the South Pole, scientists say


    "Dinosaurs sit at an evolutionary point between birds, which are warm-blooded, and reptiles, which are cold-blooded," said Robin Dawson, who conducted the research while she was a doctoral student in geology and geophysics at Yale. "Our results suggest that all major groups of dinosaurs had warmer body temperatures than their environment."



    The researchers tested eggshell fossils from a Troodon, a small, meat-eating therapod (the same family as the T-Rex); a duck-billed, plant-eating dinosaur called a Maiasaura; and a Megaloolithus, a sauropod known for its huge size.

    Illustration of Maiasaura newborns in nest















    'Ancient thermometer'


    By looking at the order of oxygen and carbon atoms in the fossilized egg shells, the researchers were able to calculate the dinosaur mom's internal body temperature. It's a process called "clumped isotope paleothermometry."
    "Eggs, because they are formed inside dinosaurs, act like ancient thermometers," said Pincelli Hull, an assistant professor at Yale University's Department of Geology and Geophysics, and a co-author of the study.


    A rare disease among children is discovered in a 66-million-year-old dinosaur tumor


    To help understand the temperature of the local environment when the eggs were laid, the researchers conducted the same kind of analysis on fossilized shells of cold-blooded invertebrates, which take on the temperature of their surroundings.
    They found that the samples they tested suggested that the dinosaurs' body temperatures were warmer than their surroundings would have been. So unlike reptiles, which rely on heat from the environment, the research indicates that dinosaurs were capable of internally generating heat.
    The different dinosaurs varied in how much their body temperatures were higher than their environment. The Troodon samples were as much as 10 C warmer, while the Maiasaura were 15 C warmer. The Megaloolithus samples showed the smallest range of 3 C to 6 C warmer.


    Why did the dinosaurs go extinct? New study hopes to put debate to rest


    "What we found indicates that the ability to metabolically raise their temperatures above the environment was an early, evolved trait for dinosaurs," Dawson, the lead author of the study that published last week in the journal Science Advances, said in a news release.
    Whether dinosaurs were cold or warm-blooded has been a long-running debate among paleontologists. A study from 2014 suggested they were neither, occupying a middle ground.
    "Understanding these giants of the terrestrial realm has been at the forefront of science for centuries, and it really matters if they are cold or warm-blooded. It changes how active we think they were and how they would have interacted with the environment," Hull said.
    While once controversial, it's now widely accepted that many dinosaurs would have some type of feather-like structure.
    However, why dinosaurs first evolved feathers is still a big topic of discussion.
    Dawson said this research suggested that it would have helped them keep warm.
    "It's possible that dense feathers were primarily selected for insulation, as body size decreased in theropod dinosaurs on the evolutionary pathway to modern birds," Dawson said. "Feathers could have then later been co-opted for sexual display or flying."
    Last edited by Bogertophis; 02-17-2020 at 08:08 PM.
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    Re: A commonly held belief about dinosaurs may be all wrong

    OMG. How am I going to explain this to my 10 y/o son? This changes everything! Thanks for sharing.
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    Re: A commonly held belief about dinosaurs may be all wrong

    Quote Originally Posted by EL-Ziggy View Post
    OMG. How am I going to explain this to my 10 y/o son? This changes everything! Thanks for sharing.
    I know, so sorry! But it's fascinating too...
    Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.
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    Re: A commonly held belief about dinosaurs may be all wrong

    Quote Originally Posted by Bogertophis View Post
    I know, so sorry! But it's fascinating too...
    It is fascinating. I tell him that facts, knowledge, and even truth are fluid and that we should never stop learning. He's going to love this one.
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    And I'll say it....SCIENCE ROCKS! There's ALWAYS more to learn & understand.
    Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.
    Eric Hoffer (1902 - 1983)

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    A commonly held belief about dinosaurs may be all wrong

    Wouldn’t their body temperatures be slightly larger due to the massive amount of surface area? How do they know for certain that the temperature increase was solely metabolic? Even poikilotherms can occasionally maintain constant internal temps typically via ectothermic homeothermy. To me it only makes sense that an organism as large as a dinosaur in a stable environment would have an internal temperature slightly higher than the environment. Which is why gigantothermy is called GIGANTOthermy... Very cool paper but they can’t prove that it was due to metabolic heat.


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    Last edited by MarkL1561; 02-17-2020 at 11:40 PM.

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    Re: A commonly held belief about dinosaurs may be all wrong

    Quote Originally Posted by MarkL1561 View Post
    Wouldn’t their body temperatures be slightly larger due to the massive amount of surface area? How do they know for certain that the temperature increase was solely metabolic? Even poikilotherms can occasionally maintain constant internal temps typically via ectothermic homeothermy. To me it only makes sense that an organism as large as a dinosaur in a stable environment would have an internal temperature slightly higher than the environment. Which is why gigantothermy is called GIGANTOthermy... Very cool paper but they can’t prove that it was due to metabolic heat.
    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    This was actually a solid argument against warm-blooded-ness in the larger species, specifically sauropods. They've since done more testing on the bones of many species and found they have air pockets in them, much like a bird's bones. And, just like a bird, these pockets contained areas for respiration (I can't remember the exact term, but much like our bronchial tubes only spread throughout their bodies). This allowed for cooling throughout the body despite their large sizes.

    Also important to mention that the oxygen content during the time in which the dinos were evolving in the Triassic was significantly lower than it was in the Jurassic and Cretaceous, which accounts for the reason as to WHY they developed the air sacs in the first place. It's believed they evolved their respiratory systems as a means of distributing more oxygen throughout their bodies since there was less available in the atmosphere. As oxygen amounts increased, body sizes were also allowed to increase.

    I'm explaining it badly, but there's a book called The Story of Life that goes into details as to the rises and falls of oxygen levels throughout Earth history and how it has affected much of life's evolutionary paths. It's fascinating to me.

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