paigetheoracle Posted February 6, 2008 Report Posted February 6, 2008 Watching 'Life in Cold Blood', the BBC's new project by Sir David Attenborough, on reptiles - he harked back to how the bigger dinosaurs wouldn't need to keep warm through sunbathing as with smaller reptiles because of their body mass (bigger things take longer to cool down). He also mentioned that turtles seemed to be able to control heat loss better and that crocodilians had a similar mechanism, plus snakes didn't need to feed as often as mammals. This coupled with amphibians and some reptiles going into hibernation, made me wonder if this explains why they survived the big extinction and their giant cousins didn't? I was always a bit sceptical of the idea of an asteroid wiping out the dinosaurs (or volcanoes) but this made sense to me from the program as it disclosed why these other creatures might have survived a cloud of dust covering the sun and causing a significant drop in temperature but not the dinosaurs themselves. Quote
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