How Long Could Dinosaurs Live?
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A dinosaur fossil can reveal many things. For instance, paleontologists can find out what it ate, how it ran and even how the dinosaur interacted with other dinosaurs of the same species. However, what scientists and researchers cannot figure out is how long could dinosaurs live.
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In order to find out how long could dinosaurs live, paleontologists have to take many different pieces of evidence, string them together and come up with something plausible. This can include finding analogies with modern-day reptiles, finding out the metabolism of the dinosaur and conducting tests on the fossilized bones.
The reason why researchers are so obsessed with finding out how long could dinosaurs live is that modern-day reptiles are some of the longest living animals. For instance, a giant tortoise can live for over 150 years. Even birds that have descended from dinosaurs have long life spans. For instance, a turkey buzzard can live over 100 years.
There is a lot of debate whether all dinosaurs were cold blooded. If, in fact, the dinosaurs were cold blooded, it would mean that they had low metabolism rate and this could have allowed them to live long lives as is the case with the giant tortoise. However, the evidence of cold bloodedness is not conclusive because there are certain dinosaurs whose bones show that they had a growth similar to mammals which would mean that they were warm blooded.
However, researchers feel that smaller dinosaurs may have had a short life span compared to larger one based on what we see in modern times where larger creatures, with some exceptions, have longer live spans compared to smaller creatures, again with some exceptions, who do not live very long.
The debate on how long could dinosaurs live is still ongoing because there is sufficient evidence available to allow paleontologists to come to a conclusion. Until researchers find out more about dinosaurs' metabolisms and growth rates, we cannot find out what their life spans were.
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