T. Rex Had a Body Temperature of 97 Degrees

(nytimes.com)

33 points | by marojejian 2 hours ago

14 comments

  • lioeters 1 hour ago
    From the paper, that is: 36.3 ± 2.5°C.
    • Galilyou 52 minutes ago
      Phew! Thank you! I feel for the ungodly fahrenheit again
      • nmoon 47 minutes ago
        Fahrenheit is the superior measure
        • rf15 43 minutes 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 45 minutes ago
          Better for day to day life, worse for science and engineering.
          • msm_ 43 minutes 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.

            • antif 39 minutes ago
              100F is about peak summer heat; 0F is about peak winter chills. Works great for describing weather .. in various places.
          • konart 40 minutes ago
            >Better for day to day life

            It is not.

        • deagle50 40 minutes ago
          really is, and I grew up in celsius.
    • orbital-decay 1 hour ago
      Thanks, I thought it was almost boiling.
    • gibspaulding 1 hour ago
      So 97.3 ± 4.5 °F for anyone else curious how the precision translates.
  • mepian 1 hour ago
    I read the headline in Celsius and thought that they were a bit too hot.
    • unsnap_biceps 16 minutes 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 52 minutes 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 46 minutes 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 1 hour 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 1 hour ago
      It doesn't need to. Any other unit would be either insanely cold or insanely hot.
      • skrebbel 52 minutes ago
        Given that it’s a shouty headline in a major publication, that’s what I would have expected.
    • bthrn 59 minutes ago
      Common sense suggests that living creatures are likely not boiling when they have a mild fever.
      • john_strinlai 56 minutes 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 46 minutes ago
          I’m metric all the way, but if it would use metric, it still should unambiguously state: C
          • john_strinlai 44 minutes 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 52 minutes ago
        Common sense would be using metric units in science-related article.
        • SoftTalker 46 minutes ago
          It's a US-based newspaper written for the general public. Common sense would say it's using US units.
        • petcat 47 minutes ago
          Americans don't use Celsius when talking about their body temperatures, and that's who the audience is.
          • StilesCrisis 19 minutes ago
            Americans don't use Celsius for anything except scientists talking with other scientists.
  • isomorphic 49 minutes ago
    https://archive.is/20260916181240/https://www.nytimes.com/20...

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

  • laweijfmvo 1 hour ago
    How do we know its body temperature was 97 degrees, and simply not the environment was 97 degrees?
    • cwmma 56 minutes 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.
    • altcognito 48 minutes 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.

    • pixl97 58 minutes ago
      What environment would stay at a constant 97 degrees?
      • surgi 55 minutes ago
        Europe this summer? /jk
        • lioeters 21 minutes ago
          And in Celsius too. It was quite the heat wave.
  • ChrisMarshallNY 1 hour ago
    Wouldn't be surprised if the smaller raptors had even higher body temps.
    • layer8 57 minutes ago
      Seems sensible, given that birds have higher body temperatures.
      • hedgehog 34 minutes 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 1 hour 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 43 minutes 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 1 hour ago
    Farenheit. So a little bit cooler than us.
  • ohyoutravel 1 hour ago
    This is really interesting, worth a read. Wouldn’t be surprised if the even larger dinosaurs had even higher body temps!
  • modzu 52 minutes ago
    id assumed as much since seeing jurassic park in 1996
    • kilroy123 37 minutes ago
      It's actually older, from 1993.
  • moomoo11 58 minutes 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 50 minutes ago
      Great! That's how knowledge is supposed to work.
      • partyficial 40 minutes ago
        that's not knowledge - that's just theory and belief.

        you know, like religion.

        • lioeters 18 minutes ago
          It's not at all like religion, which declares a theory to be true, hangs anyone who disagrees, and never course-corrects based on evidence.