Were dinosaurs really as aggressive, fast and active as they have always been presented to us? For 150 years, scientists have debated the nature of dinosaurs’ body temperatures and how those temperatures influenced their activity levels.
Now, new research from the University of California, Los Angeles (USA) also concludes that some dinosaurs had the ability to increase their body temperature using heat sources in the environment, such as the sun.
The research focused on the chemical analysis of fossilized dinosaur eggshells discovered in Argentina (long-necked sauropods) and Mongolia (small oviraptorids). Examining the minerals formed in the upper layer of the soil where the nests of ovirraptorid theropods were built, they found that the ambient temperature in Mongolia shortly before the extinction of the dinosaurs was approximately 26ºC .
“ This technique reports on the internal body temperature of the female dinosaur when she was ovulating . These are the first direct measurements of the body temperatures of these theropods. ”Says Aradhna Tripati, co-author of the study.
According to the study, the body temperatures of the sauropods were approximately 37.7ºC and those of the smaller dinosaurs, probably less than 32ºC: “The body temperatures of the ovirraptorid dinosaur were higher than the ambient temperatures, which suggests that they were not they were really cold-blooded, if not intermediate, ”explains Tripati.
This variation in the temperature of the bodies of dinosaurs depending on the species, “could mean that they generate a body temperature and can raise it above that of the environment , but they do not maintain it at temperatures as high as that of modern birds ( 40ºC) ”, adds Robert Eagle, study leader.
The study has been published in the journal Nature Communications .
