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T. rex Teeth Suggest Warm-Blooded Physiology
Confirmed
In Short: A new study using dental analysis indicates Tyrannosaurus rex had a body temperature similar to modern elephants, suggesting warm-blooded traits.
Researchers used a technique called clumped isotope paleothermometry to analyze three T. rex teeth from the Hell Creek Formation in Montana.
This finding supports the idea that T. rex maintained a body temperature well above its surroundings, a characteristic of warm-blooded animals.
The warm-blooded nature of T. rex suggests it could have lived in a wider range of environments, including colder climates.
The researchers also modeled how thermal tolerance might have influenced the habitat range of T. rex.
What's confirmed
- Researchers used a technique called clumped isotope paleothermometry to analyze three T. rex teeth from the Hell Creek Formation in Montana.
- This finding supports the idea that T. rex maintained a body temperature well above its surroundings, a characteristic of warm-blooded animals.
- The warm-blooded nature of T. rex suggests it could have lived in a wider range of environments, including colder climates.
- The researchers also modeled how thermal tolerance might have influenced the habitat range of T. rex.
What's still developing
- A very large animal can stay warm simply because its bulk loses heat slowly, a phenomenon called inertial homeothermy, or gigantothermy.
- This dental thermometer read about 36° Celsius—roughly the body temperature of a modern elephant.
- The results pointed to an average body temperature of about 36.3 degrees Celsius, comparable to living large mammals such as Indian and African elephants with reported body temperatures of 36 and 36.2 degrees Celsius.
- A new analysis of Tyrannosaurus rex teeth indicates the ancient predator maintained a body temperature of about 36.3 degrees Celsius (97.3 degrees Fahrenheit), close to that of Indian and African elephants and far warmer than its cold-blooded reptile neighbors.
- “It also adds to the timeline, showing how much this ancestor of modern, very warm-blooded birds had already diverged from cold-blooded dinosaurs.” The researchers also modeled how such thermal tolerance might have shaped where Tyrannosaurus rex could live.
- The findings add to a growing body of evidence that at least some dinosaurs, particularly large theropods, were warm-blooded animals capable of generating and regulating their own body heat, rather than relying solely on external conditions, as reptiles do today.
- “The warm-blooded reptile would have adapted over millions of years to the hot-house conditions of the Cretaceous period, one of the warmest periods in Earth’s history.” “But even in the baking heat of the Cretaceous period, winter in Alaska would have been too frigid for a cold-blooded dinosaur.” The team’s results appear in the journal Science Advances.
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