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RE: sauropods: homotherm,heterotherm or gigantotherm?




From: Brian Lauret <zthemanvirus@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: zthemanvirus@hotmail.com
To: Subject: sauropods: homotherm,heterotherm or gigantotherm?
Date: Thu, 08 Sep 2005 22:26:04 +0200

Heterotherm seems like an option,due to the lower food requirements,but aren't dinosaurs thought to exhibit homothermy or near-homothermy as a plesiomorphic feature? Do naked mole rats and ,possibly,crocodiles count as heterotherms descended from homotherms? 

I think so.


but, if I recall rightly, naked mole rats shiver - which is a homothermic strategy....

is there a shiver-thermy?

Then I remember there being a theory about sauropods being gigantotherm,meaning that they maintained their body temperature by means of their size and the warmth that automatically makes them keep,allowing them to lead active,homotherm lives,without being homotherm themselves and they would also circumvent the problem of the food requirements,of course. But I do not believe there are analogs for something like that. Also,wouldn't it mean that younger or smaller sauropods (Magyarasaurus for example) had a metabolism they could not rely on?

maybe the young of the BIG ones (and likely adults of the smaller ones) weren't gigantotherms...imho, that wouldn't keep the BIG adults from being gigantotherms, right?