Dinosaur Energy Research Paper

Dinosaur Energy

Ever since the discovery of the first dinosaur in 1824, scientists and laymen alike have been fascinated by the lives of these awe-inspiring prehistoric reptiles. How did they live? What were their insides like? How fast did they go? At the heart of these and many other such questions about these “terrible lizards” is the main controversy: were dinosaurs warm or cold-blooded? This complex scientific issue relates deeply to understanding the biology and lifestyles of these creatures. Based on known scientific evidence, it is reasonable to conclude that dinosaurs were warm-blooded creatures. Certain characteristics cause a creature to be classified as either warm or cold-blooded. In general, warm blooded creatures, like mammals,
They tend to be able to live in much cooler places due to their output of self-produced body heat. Cold blooded creatures, such as amphibians and fish, tend to have a much lower aerobic potential, and rely on small bursts of anaerobic energy to accomplish their objectives (Hot-Blooded or Cold-Blooded??). They tend to be much less lively overall, and rely on heat from outside sources such as the sun. As such, they are much less capable of living in cold places. They are, however, able to live off of a much smaller amount of food resources than their warm-blooded counterparts. So the the answer to this debate over whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded or cold-blooded has massive implications for our understanding of the lives of these extinct archosaurs. If dinosaurs were warm-blooded it would mean that they were active creatures, much as modern day birds and mammals, and able to live in cold places, using the body heat that they generate to sustain homeostasis. However, if dinosaurs prove to be cold-blooded, it would mean that they
Birds are warm-blooded, but crocodilans are cold-blooded, which is inconclusive to determining what Mesozoic dinosaurs were. So other ways must be utilized to find an answer to this mystery. One method we could use for determining whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded or not is to look at their geographical range. All the major types of dinosaurs, from ornithischians, to sauropods, to theropods, have been discovered in places that would have been very cold climatically back in the Mesozoic. Even fossil turtles and crocodiles are nowhere to be found in these rocks, as the environment would have been much too cold for ectotherms such as them. However, dinosaurs seemed to have no problem with these conditions. This indicates that dinosaurs were indeed endothermic (The Evidence for Endothermy in Dinosaurs). A cold-blooded dinosaur would not have been able to survive in Antarctica or Alaska, which, though they were warmer regions back then than they are today, were much too chilly for large cold-blooded creatures (Q, By). Dinosaurs also had very efficient lungs, more so in the sauropods and theropods than in the ornithischians, which is a trait that characterizes tachymetabolic animals that need a high oxygen intake. Scientists have determined that dinosaurs' lungs were oftentimes even more efficient than our own, and that the highly effective lungs