Repost from a different thread: Related only topically, a 1hr YouTube talk I enjoyed a lot: "Hatchling T. rex and the Evolution of Vertebrate Parental Care" by Nick Longrich: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd0dR2n9hLA
He's a paleontologist and the talk starts with some pretty interesting statistical analysis aiming to estimate T rex clutch sizes (66 eggs) and hatchling weights (1.5kg) as well as T rex parental care. It ends with looking at evolutionary history trends in increasing parental investment in radically different animals.
He talks a little slow, so a little playback speed bump won't go amiss.
They compared against crocodilian teeth and those teeth were at a different temperature. Crocodilian teeth are known to be at a similar temperature to their environment because they are known to be cold blooded.
It is correct to say that we don't know they were warm blooded, just that their body temps were likely the given observed temperature.
If it was environmental then you'd expect it to fluctuate over time, but they also checked it against an animal they knew to be cold blooded, if it was environmental you'd expect them to be the same, but that animal was calculated by the same method to be colder.
I didn't know this so I looked up the number for farm chickens, according to University of Kentucky (seems appropriate) they have a body temperature of "between 105°F and 107°F (40.6° and 41.7°C) ... Smaller chicken breeds have a higher body temperature than larger breeds"
> Write a song about the T-rex. First line "Hotter than a crocodile, cooler than a chicken". Format for aisonggenerator.io.
Then I copied the output to aisonggenerator.io (1 free song per day), and used Audacity/Tenacity to record the MP3 because they make you pay to download.
> Up until the early 2000s, dinosaurs were thought to be rather reptilian and therefore probably coldblooded, Dr. Wiemann said. That began to change as multiple lines of evidence from geochemistry studies and CT scans of fossils showed they were warm-blooded. Dr. Wiemann had previously found that T. rex had a fast metabolism, but she said the new study did an “exquisite” job of zeroing in on a precise body temperature.
> To take the body temperature of a long extinct, school-bus-size predator, scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, used a clever geochemistry technique on fossilized teeth, including two from “Thomas,” a famous T. rex in the collection of the National History Museum of Los Angeles County.
It intuitively makes sense. A cold-blooded creature of that mass would take a long time to properly warm up or cool down. Most modern cold-blooded animals are small, e.g. frogs, snakes, lizards. They can move into the sunlight or shade as needed and pretty quickly change temperature.
I quite like Fahrenheit. The 0 to 100F (-17 to 37C) range perfectly encapsulates the range of outdoor temperatures I expect to encounter during the year. If the forecast is outside that range, it’s going to be miserable.
counterpoint: it doesn't matter, since you need to learn relevant boiling/freezing temperatures on both scales anyway.
As a european: F is the only american system that is easy to use and reason with (considering its 0-100 range is spanning the "doable" temp range of too-cold to too-hot), unlike other imperial systems for lengths and whatnot.
Is it really better for day to day life? I am certain that it only appears so because you're used to it. I think for day to day life they're both roughly equivalent.
Of course, for me Celsius is more natural and intuitive, but again - that's because I'm used to it.
It's just how some Americans justify this particular measurement system.
As you said: it's what you're used to. I know 100F is a very warm day, but if someone said it was 50F I wouldn't intrinsically know how warm or cold that is. My brain works in Celsius, so someone saying its 20C I understand instantly.
Similarly length in US football fields - I don't know what that is, but it's second nature to someone who did grow up using them as a measurement.
You can basically put a "%" after a fahrenheit temperature and read it as "percentage of a really hot day" and you'll get a pretty good idea what it feels like outside.
It's pretty well calibrated as a 0-100 scale for human temperature perception.
I moved from a cold climate to a tropical climate and let me assure you there's no human universal understanding of what's comfortably hot or cold, definitely not to the point of putting a percentage on it. I can walk around in a T-shirt and shorts at 17C (62f) while locals will be wrapping up in scarves and talking about how freezing it is. Meanwhile they'll be fairly comfortable at 35C (95f), at least if the humidity isn't high, and I'll be stuck in with the AC blasting.
So in other words Fahrenheit is a western centric measurement (or at least, temperature climate centric), while Celsius is universal.
The US has the widest range of temperatures of any country. Locations can vary by >50°C in a 24 hour period. Extreme temperatures are familiar to Americans and their society is well-adapted to it.
Calling Fahrenheit "western centric" is nonsensical. Every other country has a narrower temperature range that fits within the US temperature range.
The subjective experience doesn’t really matter because many places in the US will experience a 100 degree F range over an entire year. So it’s not the “comfortable range” but the actual range you’ll get in many parts of the US (whether you like it or not).
Right, but "room temperature" is pretty universal everywhere because we are going with the "average human" rather than "outliers exist and maybe feel differently"
You can do the same thing with celsius if you live in a country with a different temperature "calendar".
I'm used to the idea that 0C is what splits the year between cold season and warm season. Obviously people from California will see it differently, for example.
So where I live it is like this:
30 or more - hot
15..30 warm
0..15 chilly
-15..0 calendar winter
-30..-15 real winter
..-30 - freezing, kinds younger than 12 don't go to school
Kelvin is superior for science and engineering but doesn't arbitrarily anchor the scale to the freezing and boiling point of water in the way Celsius and Fahrenheit both do.
273.15 Kelvin doesn't roll off the tongue like 0°C or 32°F.
Well it’s definitely not 97 K, it’s definitely not 97 C, so it’s probably 97 F which would put it in the same general ballpark as nearly all terrestrial vertebrates.
Weird, my browser somehow doesn’t render the title as “T. Rex Had a Body Temperature of 97 Degrees whichever unit doesn’t kill the dinosaur”. It just leaves that last part out, making it even shorter than “F”.
It seems that this headline is following the guidelines of the times style guide: "In general, ordinary references to temperature do not specify the scale."
The same newspaper uses Celsius in its climate reporting, including the article below. Apparently the units depend on which extinction we’re discussing. One extra letter would save the guesswork.
This makes sense from a context and writer perspective.
Most conversation about climate change has been around global average temps raising in C. Further, switching that back and forth and doubling it for F would be seen as manipulative by people that don’t want to hear it.
On the contrary, the Times’s US audience (probably their main audience) thinks of body temp, which this is, in F.
To add further, the audience and writers that want to share cool, new dinosaur fact and the group that does an update on global warming are different people and operate and think differently around these specific things in these specific contexts.
Of course it would be easier to add the letter, but I can definitely see why it wasn’t included.
I know you were talking about a mountain or something, but "climb to <altitude>" does make one think about this exchange which would be in feet, not meters:
"climb to FL20 and the flying dinosaur thing will break" could work though
Since, annoyingly, international altitudes are done in increments of 1000 feet (ish, handwaving)
i know its the nytimes, so we can assume american units, but i find it sort of crazy that even throughout the body of the article it doesnt ever say "fahrenheit".
A lot of monitoring software defaults to displaying hardware temperatures in Celsius regardless of the locale, and I've gotten so accustomed to knowing what a reasonable temperature is for different components that I personally never change the display units.
i will now believe this information until it becomes outdated in the future, at which point i will believe that information until it becomes outdated later
I can testify that my baseline body temperature (measured sublingually) is 97.6℉
By the way, Google Fit's body-temperature entry is cool, but when it comes to "Location", why is "mouth" in the middle of the list and next to some other, unrelated parts? How is the list being sorted?
He's a paleontologist and the talk starts with some pretty interesting statistical analysis aiming to estimate T rex clutch sizes (66 eggs) and hatchling weights (1.5kg) as well as T rex parental care. It ends with looking at evolutionary history trends in increasing parental investment in radically different animals.
He talks a little slow, so a little playback speed bump won't go amiss.
It is correct to say that we don't know they were warm blooded, just that their body temps were likely the given observed temperature.
https://afs.mgcafe.uky.edu/poultry/chapter-7-air-temperature
is the opening line to a great song i'll never get to hear.
> Write a song about the T-rex. First line "Hotter than a crocodile, cooler than a chicken". Format for aisonggenerator.io.
Then I copied the output to aisonggenerator.io (1 free song per day), and used Audacity/Tenacity to record the MP3 because they make you pay to download.
> To take the body temperature of a long extinct, school-bus-size predator, scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, used a clever geochemistry technique on fossilized teeth, including two from “Thomas,” a famous T. rex in the collection of the National History Museum of Los Angeles County.
fascinating
we've also learned more about the air at the time via teeth, https://nautil.us/the-data-in-a-dinos-smile-1229729
As a european: F is the only american system that is easy to use and reason with (considering its 0-100 range is spanning the "doable" temp range of too-cold to too-hot), unlike other imperial systems for lengths and whatnot.
Weight, mass and considerable distances, I’ll grant you, though.
Of course, for me Celsius is more natural and intuitive, but again - that's because I'm used to it.
As you said: it's what you're used to. I know 100F is a very warm day, but if someone said it was 50F I wouldn't intrinsically know how warm or cold that is. My brain works in Celsius, so someone saying its 20C I understand instantly.
Similarly length in US football fields - I don't know what that is, but it's second nature to someone who did grow up using them as a measurement.
It's pretty well calibrated as a 0-100 scale for human temperature perception.
So in other words Fahrenheit is a western centric measurement (or at least, temperature climate centric), while Celsius is universal.
Calling Fahrenheit "western centric" is nonsensical. Every other country has a narrower temperature range that fits within the US temperature range.
I'm used to the idea that 0C is what splits the year between cold season and warm season. Obviously people from California will see it differently, for example.
So where I live it is like this:
30 or more - hot
15..30 warm
0..15 chilly
-15..0 calendar winter
-30..-15 real winter
..-30 - freezing, kinds younger than 12 don't go to school
Judging anything on a scale from 0-10 (or 0-100) is very common.
273.15 Kelvin doesn't roll off the tongue like 0°C or 32°F.
For serious scientific and engineering applications the freezing and boiling point of water isn't actually 0°C and 100°C in most real scenarios.
It is not.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/02/climate/united-nations-cl...
Edit: Removed the headline quotation because the search listing and article heading differ.
Most conversation about climate change has been around global average temps raising in C. Further, switching that back and forth and doubling it for F would be seen as manipulative by people that don’t want to hear it.
On the contrary, the Times’s US audience (probably their main audience) thinks of body temp, which this is, in F.
To add further, the audience and writers that want to share cool, new dinosaur fact and the group that does an update on global warming are different people and operate and think differently around these specific things in these specific contexts.
Of course it would be easier to add the letter, but I can definitely see why it wasn’t included.
"Quick! Climb to 300 meters above sea level and the trex will boil and we will be safe!"
"Quick! Climb to about 1000 feet above sea level and the trex will boil and we will be safe!"
"climb to FL20 and the flying dinosaur thing will break" could work though
Since, annoyingly, international altitudes are done in increments of 1000 feet (ish, handwaving)
and as the sibling comment mentions, i am primed for science articles to be metric.
at least, that was the concept was drilled into me throughout all my schooling. perhaps that has changed in the last few decades.
(Even the NY Times gift link requires a login.)
you know, like religion.
By the way, Google Fit's body-temperature entry is cool, but when it comes to "Location", why is "mouth" in the middle of the list and next to some other, unrelated parts? How is the list being sorted?