I think the argument has been mostly settled in favor of the "lukewarm-blooded" theory, but it'd still be interesting to see if anyone has any dissenting opinions.

  • Bluegrass_Buddhist [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    a polar cretaceous winter would have been similarly cold

    For real? I don't know much about cretacious climates but I thought the era was generally warmer than the quaternary. Like no-ice-at-the-poles warm. Happy to be wrong about this, that was just my impression.

    • coeliacmccarthy [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      no permanent ice at the poles, correct; but sea ice in winter wasn't out of the question IMO. It was a lot warmer but that still meant a cool-temperate continental climate like, say, continental eastern europe or the northern Rockies

      • Bluegrass_Buddhist [none/use name]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Hmm... Ok. Idk. The thing that put me in the lukewarm-blood camp was a paper I read about dinosaur growth rates (specifically therapods and sauropods, I think?). The argument was they grew in a way that was too seasonally-dependant to be warm-blooded, but too quickly to be truly cold-blooded. Or something along those lines.