Dinosaurs may have been warm-blooded, scientists said Wednesday, in a finding that could debunk one of the most commonly-held images of the extinct giants.When I was a child dinosaurs were cold-blooded creatures akin to lizards. The brachiosaur was reputed to have had a brain so tiny it needed a spare in its tailbone to keep its back end synchronized with its front end. At some point some genius noticed that no dinosaur had hips built like lizards'. Somebody else -- or maybe even the same guy -- noticed that the primary differences between an allosaur and a chicken were size and teeth. Evidence has even been found that at least some dinosaurs had feathers. Now, even a fool like me knows that chickens are warm-blooded. Therefore it's pretty logical that all dinosaurs except for exceptions like the ankylosaur (which had a lizard's hips and shoulders) were warm-blooded.
Researchers in Spain and Norway reported in the journal Nature they had found tree-like growth rings on the bones of mammals, a feature that until now was thought to be limited to cold-blooded creatures ... and dinosaurs. They also found evidence that dinosaurs probably had a high metabolic rate to allow fast growth -- another indicator of warm-bloodedness.
When I look around the Wonderful World of Nature there are a number of things that I notice without half trying, which, since scientists don't seem to have noticed the same thing makes me think that either I'm smarter than I think I am or scientists are dumber. F'instance, literal herds of duckbilled dinosaurs used to roam western North America, though I think they called it Gondwanaland or something like that back them. (I forget -- it was a long time ago. I was still in junior high...) Adults ranged in size between 10 and 40 feet long. Herbivores that size would consume quite a few bales of hay in a single day. An African elephant, which is not nearly as large as a 40-foot dinosaur, eats about 450 kilograms of vegetation per day. The climate back in those days must have been pretty lush to support bison-sized herds of the critters.
"Our results strongly suggest that dinosaurs were warm-blooded," lead author Meike Koehler of Spain's Institut Catala de Paleontologia told Agence La Belle France Presse.
Another thing I've noticed is body conformation. The allosaurs and Tyrannisaurus Rex and similar creatures were bipedal, which is pretty rare in nature. And they had eentsy-weentsy forelegs which they presumably used to hold down duckbilled dinosaurs and brontosaurs and such while ripping their throats out. But the only creatures still around with approximately the same body conformation as the velociraptors are kangaroos and wallabies and such. I'm much too old and fat and dignified to giggle, but the thought of a tyrannisaur hopping across the plains to fall upon Donald Duckbill occasionally has me in stitches.
If so, the findings should prompt a rethink about reptiles, she said.
I'm not too sure why we should rethink anything about reptiles since dinosaurs were chickens, only bigger and with teeth...
Modern-day reptiles are cold-blooded, meaning they cannot control their body temperatures through their own metabolic system -- relying instead on external means such as basking in the sun.
Yeah, and some of them had walnut-sized brains at each end...
While the dinosaurs may have been warm-blooded, their other characteristics kept them squarely in the reptile camp, said Koehler.
I saw Jurassic Park, so I know better. If they didn't have lizard hips they weren't lizards. Quod erat, as they say, demonstrandum...
Palaeontologists have long noted the ring-like markings on the bones of cold-blooded creatures and dinosaurs, and taken them to indicate pauses in growth, perhaps due to cold periods or lack of food. The bones of warm-blooded animals such as birds and mammals had never been properly assessed to see if they, too, exhibit the lines. Koehler and her team found the rings in all 41 warm-blooded animal species they studied, including antelopes, deer and giraffes. The finding "eliminates the strongest argument that does exist for cold-bloodedness" in dinosaurs, she said.