wildlife

Our next story has teeth. Big ones. Scientists studied chemical clues in a 66-million-year-old tooth from a Tyrannosaurus rex. That tooth may help answer a classic dinosaur question: were dinosaurs cold like many reptiles today, or warm like birds and mammals? By looking at chemicals preserved in the tooth, researchers estimated the T. rex’s body temperature. Their result suggested it was close to human body temperature. Your body is usually around 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 37 degrees Celsius. The new estimate does not mean T. rex was exactly the same temperature as you. Fossils are ancient, and scientists use careful methods to make estimates. But the finding adds evidence that T. rex may have been warm-blooded, meaning its body could keep itself warm from the inside. That idea fits with what many paleontologists already suspect about some dinosaurs. Birds are living dinosaurs, and birds are warm-blooded. So studying dinosaur fossils can help scientists connect ancient giants to animals alive today. One tooth cannot tell us everything about T. rex life. But it can hold tiny chemical clues, like a time capsule from 66 million years ago.