One of the biggest mysteries about dinosaurs is whether they are ectotherm or endotherms – in other words , cold - blooded like reptile or warm - blooded like raspberry . Now there may be a manner to figure it out using minerals on dinosaur teeth .
While dinosaurs certainly expect like giant lizards , the current evolutionary consensus is that they ’re actually more closely related to birds . Still , the difference is small enough that paleontologists do n’t feel comfortable concluding one direction or the other on whether dinosaurs could regulate their inner body temperature .
The possible solution to this conundrum lies in a mineral lie with as apatite , a primal component of animal teeth and ivory throughout this planet ’s account . The laborious isotope of oxygen and carbon have a unique way of bring together in the biological forms of apatite ; basically , the low the temperature , the more potential these isotopes are to cluster together .
Robert Eagle , postdoc researcher at the California Institute of Technology , explicate the result of this fact :
“ If you could mensurate the clop accurately enough , you could work out the temperature at which a mineral precipitated . In the case of teeth and ivory , this will be the body temperature of the organism . ”
Eagle and his fellow investigator first tested this method acting on mammal species both living and extinct , let in elephants , flocculent mammoth , and a 12 million class old rhinocerotid . Testing on the apatite of the elephants succumb results within a couple degrees of the keep animals ’ actual interior temperatures , which bodes well for its pertinence for old species .
The team then added insensate - blooded species from a range of eras , including a Miocene gator species that was coetaneous with the rhinocerotid species . Again , the results were outstandingly consistent with make out figures , and it was found the cold-blooded - full-blooded tool were about six level cooler than their fond - blooded opposite number . This withstand true for the ancient alligator and rhinocerotid , which establish Eagle and company optimistic that this can be apply to even more ancient species .
Although venturing into species as ancient as the dinosaur – anywhere from sixty - five to hundred of millions years sometime – is new district for this technique , the potential benefits are enormous . figure out the growth of endothermic soundbox temperature would be a vast breakthrough for evolutionary biology , and the temperature reading for cold - full-blooded coinage may provide a fairly precise form of average temperature when the dinosaurs lived .
viaScientific American
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