New technology developed by US researchers should shed light on whether dinosaurs were cold-blooded or warm-blooded animals, a study has said.
California Institute of Technology (Caltech) researchers unveiled what they said was the first method for direct measurement of the body temperatures of large extinct vertebrates using analyses of isotopes in animals’ bones, teeth, and eggshells.
The findings were published in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).
“This is not quite like going back in time and sticking a thermometer up a creature’s back end,” said researcher John Eiler, a geochemistry professor Caltech. “But it’s close.”
To study changes in temperature regulation in extinct animals requires knowing what their body temperatures once were. The team’s method looks at the concentrations of two rare isotopes — carbon-13 and oxygen-18.
“Heavy isotopes like to bond, or clump together, and this clumping effect is dependent on temperature,” said lead author Robert Eagle, a Caltech postdoctoral scholar.
“At very hot temperatures, you get a more random distribution of these isotopes, less clumping. At low temperatures, you find more clumping.”
After proving their method on living elephants and sharks, the team turned to the extinct.