Dinosaurs: Nimble and warm-blooded?
Tyrannosaurus rex may have been athletic rather than lumbering
Scientists have debated for decades about whether dinosaurs were warm or cold-blooded.
But new research suggests larger prehistoric creatures were warm-blooded and athletic as opposed to the lumbering cumbersome creatures depicted by traditional thinking.
Researchers at Washington University in St Louis analysed the anatomical details of 14 dinosaurs of different sizes to work out how much energy they might have needed to move around, according to the Guardian.
The study, which was published in PLoS ONE, revealed that, for dinosaurs weighing from a few kilograms to tonnes, the muscle power needed was much too high for the animals to have been cold-blooded.
Since the 1950s scientists have been arguing over whether dinosaurs were warm or cold blooded, because each type of metabolism implies different physical attributes.
Cold-blooded animals - such as lizards - are heavily dependent on the temperature around them to stay active, whereas warm-blooded animals - such as mammals and birds - can live anywhere and move around or hunt for food at any time of day.
Research leader Herman Pontzer told the Guardian dinosaurs "may well have been warm-blooded".
"If so," he said, "we can't think of them as slow, lumbering reptiles anymore."
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