well i know that the opinion in the scientific community has been changing on this. For many years I believe the consensus was cold blooded but there is now a growing faction that espouses a theory that they were in fact warm blooded. I dont know a lot of the specifics though. 9 hours? that's a helluva lot of time. ah shit I just glanced at your vices and now I really want a cigarette. cutting back is hard.

**hiccup**

**squints**

"you're that damned green haired angel-goddess a-hantin' me dreams ever' night aren't ye?"

**hiccup***

"barkeep! a beer for the lady her--- wait, do angels drink beers?"

**hiccup**


**muttermutterdamnedangelscan'tleaveanhonestmanbe- passout**




**hiccup**

-pb

warm... maybe... how are you doing?

where's that damn drunk icon when you need it? curses!

so a few friends of mine found this place with all you can eat breakfast and all you can drink champagne on sundays from 11-4. i went to get some waffles and cantelope but ended up drunk again.

so how YOU doin?

**hiccup**

its a good thing i have nothing to do today except that damn bbq at 6pm with that keg of sam adams.

lush? who me?



-pb

hah that's capital!! joined up **hiccup** **squint**

i need a nap before da bbq. apparantly there's going to be alot of grrls there which makes me sort of nervous and pensive and wondering if i should really be wearing this mickey mouse shirt and budweiser hat.


-pb

Good question, I'd venture to guess that it was a mix of both, depending upon the species and where they were in the way of evolution and all that. I don't think it's possible to say that they were all one type or another. Was there a specific dinosaur you were pondering?

odi omnes

And for what it's worth, that pic you describe as the favorite one of you ever taken blows me away. Something very european about the expression/look about you. Was that an art piece, or commercial work?

odi omnes

Nothing wrong with debunking of myths and spreading knowledge

Egads, though, as far as 9 hours of reading the same stuff - I thought maybe you'd been doing some research. Hopefully there was some good reading...

odi omnes

No worries love. i did miss you that night, but i will be back home soon, we will have to hook up then. I am in Denmark at the moment, and can't wait to get the fck out of here. I love it and all, but there is a lot going on in the states that i want a piece of.

how goes the school thing? Other than reading for 9 hours, and grading thousands of papers?

Ah... alas I have no fricking idea! Dinosaurs are a complete mystery to me... I used to know stuff but then new theories came out and I got confused... Sorry

[Edited on Aug 02, 2004 2:01AM]

where've you been?

when i was a dinosaur, it was the cool thing to have warm blood.

I would guess cold-blooded b/c they were like reptile ancestors (right?). But they are too big not to control their own temperature regulation. So, I dunno.

a rather lengthy tirade of an email awaits thee.


will you still me?




-pb

and dinosaurs were actually giant birds or something. i saw it on discovery channel. so um, whatever birds are.






-pb

I'm gonna suggest warm...not that it really matters now.

i have studied the Wherethefuckhaveyoubeen-a-saurus extensively & i can assure you that it was warm blooded.

i think they changed over time, from being reptillian cold blooded to warm blooded mammals and bird...I think dinosaurs evolved into other creatures, namely birds, and some marine life,.certain "dinosaur like" descedanats survived, only beacuse they were smaller and were further away from teh impact of the meteors ( near the equator ie florida and egypt..crocodile/alligigator/gila)

reptiles, are after all a more primitive species than mammals, i dont really believe that a giant meteor wiped out dinosaurs, they really adapted over a period of time, due to climatic changes caused by a few smaller meteors that did impact the earth. In the evlolution of the planet, something like this didnt happen over a few days, more likely a few hundred years, but in the length of this planet that seems like a very short while.


this has got to be the smartest anything i have wrote on this site haha!!

my not so expert opinion leans towards cold blooded.
warmblooded creatures spend as much as 70% of their energy towards maintaining a bodytemperature. imagine if a forty ton creature spend that much of it's energy intake on just it's body temperature, the amount of food it would need would be astronomical compared to a cold blooded creature.

add that most of the really huge dinosaurs lived in a climate that was absolutely perfect for cold blooded creatures it would pretty much eliminate the need for being warmblooded, the reduction on food that it would be need would be a major advantage of being coldblooded too.
(the big dinosaurs had pretty primitive brains to called reptile brains, we all have reptile brains but most if not all warmblooded creatures these days have much more than just the reptile brain)

besides why not a schism, the big sauropods could be coldblooded and the more intelligent and quicker later species like the raptor family could be warmblooded.
nothing is set in stone, just look at the echidna, a coldblooded, egglaying mammal with a pouch.

Primarily is the key. I don't think any of the current experts think it was an all or nothing thing.

Some of the carnivores (dromeosaurs especially) would have almost had to have been warm blooded to keep up the activity level. The predator/prey ratios suggest warm blooded.

Some of the larger types (like the sauropods) may have had some kind of mass homeothermy going on... warm themselves up in the sun, then it takes hours and hours to cool down... a kind of fake warm bloodedness.

Comparing them to reptiles is a little misleading. Linnaean systeming isn't that accurate, and they were classified in the 19th century based on a scattering of bones.

Using Cladograms, we can set them in a group that lay eggs or give birth on land, then narrow that so that they are on a path with reptiles, then branch off to Sauria (crocs, pterosaurs, dinosaurs, and birds), then dinosauria (common ancestors to dinos and birds), etc.

But you prolly already know all this, so I ain't helping too much, am I?

Actually, I'm all kinds of nerd...

Short answer is, back in the mid 80s or so I read a book called Riddle of the Dinosaur (John Wilford) on the train to Disneyland 'cause I was bored. It described deinonychus as hopping around on one foot, holding onto prey while kicking the crap out of it; and all the childhood dinosaur love that little boys have, was reopened. One of my email addresses is dnnychus, actually, speaking of nerds.

That lead to Horner, Bakker, etc., and now I read dino books and Stephen Jay Gould as a... hobby, I guess. I've heard Jack Horner lecture twice (tyrannosaur as scavenger, which rules by the way) and got him to autograph a copy of Dinosaur Lives for me.