Many dinosaurs were likely warm-blooded with high metabolic rates that resembled those of modern birds, according to a study published in Nature. Comparing samples from more than 50 vertebrate species, some modern and some extinct, researchers found evidence that endothermy, or warm-bloodedness, was already widespread before the mass extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous period, challenging the widely held idea that differences in metabolism explain why birds fared so much better than non-avian dinosaurs.
“This is really exciting for us as paleontologists,” study coauthor and Caltech postdoc Jasmina Wiemann said in a press statement. “The question of whether dinosaurs were warm- or cold-blooded is one of the oldest questions in paleontology, and now we think we have a consensus, that most dinosaurs were warm-blooded.”
Endothermy, the ability to maintain a constant body temperature by ramping up one’s metabolic rate, is considered a key innovation in vertebrate evolution, as ...
