T. Rex Had a Body Temperature of 97 Degrees

(nytimes.com)

35 points | by marojejian 3 hours ago

15 comments

  • lioeters 2 hours ago
    From the paper, that is: 36.3 ± 2.5°C.
    • Galilyou 1 hour ago
      Phew! Thank you! I feel for the ungodly fahrenheit again
      • nmoon 1 hour ago
        Fahrenheit is the superior measure
        • rf15 1 hour ago
          counterpoint: it doesn't matter, since you need to learn relevant boiling/freezing temperatures on both scales anyway.

          As a european: F is the only american system that is easy to use and reason with (considering its 0-100 range is spanning the "doable" temp range of too-cold to too-hot), unlike other imperial systems for lengths and whatnot.

        • WarmWash 1 hour ago
          Better for day to day life, worse for science and engineering.
          • msm_ 1 hour ago
            Is it really better for day to day life? I am certain that it only appears so because you're used to it. I think for day to day life they're both roughly equivalent.

            Of course, for me Celsius is more natural and intuitive, but again - that's because I'm used to it.

            • WarmWash 19 minutes ago
              You can basically put a "%" after a fahrenheit temperature and read it as "percentage of a really hot day" and you'll get a pretty good idea what it feels like outside.

              It's pretty well calibrated as a 0-100 scale for human temperature perception.

            • antif 1 hour ago
              100F is about peak summer heat; 0F is about peak winter chills. Works great for describing weather .. in various places.
          • konart 1 hour ago
            >Better for day to day life

            It is not.

        • deagle50 1 hour ago
          really is, and I grew up in celsius.
    • orbital-decay 2 hours ago
      Thanks, I thought it was almost boiling.
    • gibspaulding 2 hours ago
      So 97.3 ± 4.5 °F for anyone else curious how the precision translates.
  • mepian 2 hours ago
    I read the headline in Celsius and thought that they were a bit too hot.
    • unsnap_biceps 1 hour ago
      Would add a new fun dimension to Jurassic Park.

      "Quick! Climb to 300 meters above sea level and the trex will boil and we will be safe!"

  • strongwaddle 1 hour ago
    'Hotter than a crocodile, cooler than a chickennnnn....'

    is the opening line to a great song i'll never get to hear.

  • code_biologist 1 hour ago
    Repost from a different thread: Related only topically, a 1hr YouTube talk I enjoyed a lot: "Hatchling T. rex and the Evolution of Vertebrate Parental Care" by Nick Longrich: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd0dR2n9hLA

    He's a paleontologist and the talk starts with some pretty interesting statistical analysis aiming to estimate T rex clutch sizes (66 eggs) and hatchling weights (1.5kg) as well as T rex parental care. It ends with looking at evolutionary history trends in increasing parental investment in radically different animals.

    He talks a little slow, so a little playback speed bump won't go amiss.

  • john_strinlai 2 hours ago
    i know its the nytimes, so we can assume american units, but i find it sort of crazy that even throughout the body of the article it doesnt ever say "fahrenheit".
    • BugsJustFindMe 2 hours ago
      It doesn't need to. Any other unit would be either insanely cold or insanely hot.
      • skrebbel 1 hour ago
        Given that it’s a shouty headline in a major publication, that’s what I would have expected.
    • bthrn 2 hours ago
      Common sense suggests that living creatures are likely not boiling when they have a mild fever.
      • john_strinlai 2 hours ago
        i am not a paleontologist and there have been many extremely weird living creatures over the time earth has been around.

        and as the sibling comment mentions, i am primed for science articles to be metric.

        • falserum 1 hour ago
          I’m metric all the way, but if it would use metric, it still should unambiguously state: C
          • john_strinlai 1 hour ago
            indeed! my "common sense" is to always state the units you're working with, no matter how obvious you think it is.

            at least, that was the concept was drilled into me throughout all my schooling. perhaps that has changed in the last few decades.

      • vojtapol 1 hour ago
        Common sense would be using metric units in science-related article.
        • SoftTalker 1 hour ago
          It's a US-based newspaper written for the general public. Common sense would say it's using US units.
        • petcat 1 hour ago
          Americans don't use Celsius when talking about their body temperatures, and that's who the audience is.
          • StilesCrisis 1 hour ago
            Americans don't use Celsius for anything except scientists talking with other scientists.
  • isomorphic 1 hour ago
    https://archive.is/20260916181240/https://www.nytimes.com/20...

    (Even the NY Times gift link requires a login.)

  • laweijfmvo 2 hours ago
    How do we know its body temperature was 97 degrees, and simply not the environment was 97 degrees?
    • altcognito 1 hour ago
      They compared against crocodilian teeth and those teeth were at a different temperature. Crocodilian teeth are known to be at a similar temperature to their environment because they are known to be cold blooded.

      It is correct to say that we don't know they were warm blooded, just that their body temps were likely the given observed temperature.

    • cwmma 2 hours ago
      If it was environmental then you'd expect it to fluctuate over time, but they also checked it against an animal they knew to be cold blooded, if it was environmental you'd expect them to be the same, but that animal was calculated by the same method to be colder.
    • pixl97 2 hours ago
      What environment would stay at a constant 97 degrees?
      • surgi 1 hour ago
        Europe this summer? /jk
  • ChrisMarshallNY 2 hours ago
    Wouldn't be surprised if the smaller raptors had even higher body temps.
    • layer8 2 hours ago
      Seems sensible, given that birds have higher body temperatures.
      • hedgehog 1 hour ago
        I didn't know this so I looked up the number for farm chickens, according to University of Kentucky (seems appropriate) they have a body temperature of "between 105°F and 107°F (40.6° and 41.7°C) ... Smaller chicken breeds have a higher body temperature than larger breeds"

        https://afs.mgcafe.uky.edu/poultry/chapter-7-air-temperature

  • micromacrofoot 2 hours ago
    > Up until the early 2000s, dinosaurs were thought to be rather reptilian and therefore probably coldblooded, Dr. Wiemann said. That began to change as multiple lines of evidence from geochemistry studies and CT scans of fossils showed they were warm-blooded. Dr. Wiemann had previously found that T. rex had a fast metabolism, but she said the new study did an “exquisite” job of zeroing in on a precise body temperature.

    > To take the body temperature of a long extinct, school-bus-size predator, scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, used a clever geochemistry technique on fossilized teeth, including two from “Thomas,” a famous T. rex in the collection of the National History Museum of Los Angeles County.

    fascinating

    we've also learned more about the air at the time via teeth, https://nautil.us/the-data-in-a-dinos-smile-1229729

    • SoftTalker 1 hour ago
      It intuitively makes sense. A cold-blooded creature of that mass would take a long time to properly warm up or cool down. Most modern cold-blooded animals are small, e.g. frogs, snakes, lizards. They can move into the sunlight or shade as needed and pretty quickly change temperature.
  • globular-toast 2 hours ago
    Farenheit. So a little bit cooler than us.
  • ohyoutravel 2 hours ago
    This is really interesting, worth a read. Wouldn’t be surprised if the even larger dinosaurs had even higher body temps!
  • modzu 1 hour ago
    id assumed as much since seeing jurassic park in 1996
    • kilroy123 1 hour ago
      It's actually older, from 1993.
  • moomoo11 2 hours ago
    i will now believe this information until it becomes outdated in the future, at which point i will believe that information until it becomes outdated later
    • mindcandy 1 hour ago
      Great! That's how knowledge is supposed to work.
      • partyficial 1 hour ago
        that's not knowledge - that's just theory and belief.

        you know, like religion.

  • juancn 59 minutes ago
    Wow! Close to boiling! /s