For the first time has succeeded in measuring your body temperature. The study of the composition of a few teeth has helped with the body temperature of these, millions of years after its extinction. The margin of error of analysis is between one and two degrees. The night life of dinosaurs. Million years once the large herbivorous dinosaurs of the Jurassic, leading the study of the composition of its teeth has unveiled their body temperature, which was similar to that of mammals and birds present and larger than the crocodiles of cold blood. So scientists from the California Institute of technology (Caltech) and the University of Bonn (Germany) say in a study published this week in Science Express. The body of the giant Brachiosaurus had a temperature of 38.2 degrees celsius and the camarasaurio of 35.7 degrees, as it has been know thanks to the innovative method developed by researchers, which consisted in analyzing the fossilized of several species of sauropod tooth enamel of Tanzania and United States.
Experts, according to which the margin of error of analysis is between one and two degrees, measured the abundance of links between isotopes of carbon and oxygen in the apatite, the main mineral of the enamel of the teeth, which varies according to the temperature that is formed said enamel. It’s like being able to put a thermometer to an animal that has been extinct for 150 million years, said Robert Eagle, geochemical student postdoctoral fellow at Caltech and lead author of the study. However, the conclusions of the scientists not zanjan debate about whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded animals (which maintains a stable temperature) or cold (that depend on the ambient temperature). Our data provide clear evidence that his body temperature was clearly higher and more stable than the ambient temperature, stated in a note the German biochemist Thomas Tutken, of the University of Bonn, who participated in the study. But, according to the scientist this could be due to the large size of these dinosaurs, already having a BMI greater than the surface of the body (Brachiosaurus measured more than 23 meters and weighed 40 tons) is also effective to maintain constant temperature. Now the researchers intend to study dinosaurs small, unable to store heat by having one body surface area is larger than the volume, to determine if they were hot or cold blood. Research will enable to better understand the behaviour of these prehistoric animals, more leisurely and slow in beings of blood cold and more agile and faster in hot blood. Source of the news: manage to put a thermometer to dinosaurs