(PhysOrg.com) -- Were dinosaurs slow and lumbering, or quick and
agile? It depends largely on whether they were cold or warm
blooded. When dinosaurs were first discovered in the mid-19th
century, paleontologists thought they were plodding beasts that
had to rely on their environments to keep warm, like modern-day
reptiles. But research during the last few decades suggests that
they were faster creatures, nimble like the velociraptors or T.
rex depicted in the movie Jurassic Park, requiring warmer,
regulated body temperatures like in mammals. Now, a team of
researchers led by the California Institute of Technology
(Caltech) has developed a new approach to take body temperatures
of dinosaurs for the first time, providing new insights into
whether dinosaurs were cold or warm blooded. By analyzing
isotopic concentrations in teeth of sauropods, the long-tailed,
long-necked dinosaurs that were the biggest land animals to have
ever livedthink Apatosaurus (also known as Brontosaurus)the team
found that the dinosaurs