ArticleNature communications2015
Isotopic ordering in eggshells reflects body temperatures and suggests differing thermophysiology in two Cretaceous dinosaurs.
Article in Nature communications, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers.
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28 citing papers in PubMed, 86 citations in OpenAlex.
- T. rex cognition was T. rex-like-A critical outlook on diverging views of the neurocognitive evolution in dinosaurs.Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · 2026Review
- The body temperature ofScience advances · 2026Article
- Biogenic origin of secondary eggshell units in dinosaur eggshells elucidates lost biomineralization process in maniraptoran dinosaurs.Science advances · 2025Article
- The living dinosaur: accomplishments and challenges of reconstructing dinosaur physiology.Biology letters · 2025Review
- Metabolic skinflint or spendthrift? Insights into ground sloth integument and thermophysiology revealed by biophysical modeling and clumped isotope paleothermometry.Journal of mammalian evolution · 2025Article
- Chthonic severance: dinosaur eggs of the Mesozoic, the significance of partially buried eggs and contact incubation precursors.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Endothermic physiology of extinct megatooth sharks.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Evidence for heterothermic endothermy and reptile-like eggshell mineralization inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Whole-body endothermy: ancient, homologous and widespread among the ancestors of mammals, birds and crocodylians.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2022Article
- Dinosaur biodiversity declined well before the asteroid impact, influenced by ecological and environmental pressures.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Searching for a Clue to Characterize a Crystalline Dinosaur's Eggshell of Baja California, Mexico.ACS omega · 2020Article
- Variable thermoregulation of Late Cretaceous dinosaurs inferred by clumped isotope analysis of fossilized eggshell carbonates.Heliyon · 2020Article
- Eggshell geochemistry reveals ancestral metabolic thermoregulation in Dinosauria.Science advances · 2020Article
- Article
- Development and evolution of the metazoan heart.Developmental dynamics : an official publication of the American Association of Anatomists · 2019Review
- Convergent evolution of bird-mammal shared characteristics for adapting to nocturnality.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Hatching Asynchrony in Oviraptorid Dinosaurs Sheds Light on Their Unique Nesting Biology.Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2019Article
- Cracking the egg: the use of modern and fossil eggs for ecological, environmental and biological interpretation.Royal Society open science · 2018Review
- Nest substrate reflects incubation style in extant archosaurs with implications for dinosaur nesting habits.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- Formal comment on: Myhrvold (2016) Dinosaur metabolism and the allometry of maximum growth rate. PLoS ONE; 11(11): e0163205.PloS one · 2018Article
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Authors and funding
14 authors at 12 institutions in 4 countries.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Our understanding of the evolutionary transitions leading to the modern endothermic state of birds and mammals is incomplete, partly because tools available to study the thermophysiology of extinct vertebrates are limited. Here we show that clumped isotope analysis of eggshells can be used to determine body temperatures of females during periods of ovulation. Late Cretaceous titanosaurid eggshells yield temperatures similar to large modern endotherms. In contrast, oviraptorid eggshells yield temperatures lower than most modern endotherms but ∼ 6 °C higher than co-occurring abiogenic carbonates, implying that this taxon did not have thermoregulation comparable to modern birds, but was able to elevate its body temperature above environmental temperatures. Therefore, we observe no strong evidence for end-member ectothermy or endothermy in the species examined. Body temperatures for these two species indicate that variable thermoregulation likely existed among the non-avian dinosaurs and that not all dinosaurs had body temperatures in the range of that seen in modern birds.
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