How do you take a dinosaur’s temperature? Very carefully.
ORAL THERMOMETER The number of chemical bonds between certain oxygen and carbon atoms in this fossil tooth allowed scientists to determine the body temperature of a 150-million-year-old sauropod dinosaur called Camarasaurus. Thomas Tütken/University of Bonn
By counting chemical bonds in 150-million-year-old fossilized teeth, scientists have done the paleontological equivalent of jamming a thermometer up a giant reptile’s rear end.
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