Weird News

T. rex had a body temperature similar to humans

(AP): Using fossilised teeth, scientists have finally taken the Tyrannosaurus rex’s (T. rex) temperature — and it wasn’t too different from our own.

Researchers once thought that dinosaurs were sluggish, cold-blooded creatures. Later findings challenged that, suggesting that older dinosaurs were warm-blooded and could control their body temperature. Most scientists agree that T. rex was warm-blooded, but pinning down the exact core temperature of an extinct creature is difficult.

“We can’t just use a thermometer to do that,” said Jasmina Wiemann, a paleobiologist at Johns Hopkins University who had no role in the latest work.

Scientists tried other methods like studying how T. rex grew or searching for clues in its bones, but a firm number eluded them. In a new study, researchers hunted for chemical clues in the fearsome predator’s teeth. It turns out that atoms within the enamel clump together in different patterns based on an animal’s body temperature.

“We figured out how warm the most famous animal of all, a T. rex, was,” said co-author Aradhna Tripati, a geochemist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Readings from three teeth revealed an average body temperature of about 36°C. That’s similar to modern elephants and not too far from the average body temperature of humans, which ranges from 36°C to 37°C. The findings were published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

“I almost would have expected a higher body temperature,” Wiemann said. Based on her prior work, she thought the predator could have run a few degrees hotter — similar to modern birds, dinosaurs’ warm-blooded descendants.

Knowing how hot or cold the T. rex was can help scientists piece together how the dinosaur might have lived. At 36°C, T. rex could have lived across most of prehistoric North America, Tripati said, maintaining a stable internal thermometer across both cooler and hotter regions. The findings could also shed light on the kinds of prey the dinosaur had to hunt in order to keep its energy up.

Scientists say it’ll be important to test these methods on other dinosaurs to see how warm or cold they ran. It’s possible T. rex’s temperature could have been one of the keys to its dominance as one of the dinosaur age’s top predators.

“There’s lots of interesting, charismatic species that could be explored using this,” said study co-author Robert Eagle, a geobiologist at UCLA.

English village votes to exit UK

(AP): A tiny English village has voted to leave the UK as a symbolic protest against government plans to house up to 1,200 asylum seekers on a nearby military base.

Residents of Piddington, which has a population of about 350, voted overwhelmingly for secession in the non-binding referendum. The results announced on Wednesday showed 285 votes in favour of breaking away, with 26 villagers voting against.

“We have given an absolute message, not just to the region, not just to the country, but to the world,” said the parish chairman, Tim McNally. He said the district will henceforth be known as “the Principality of Piddington.”

The attention-grabbing vote was called to oppose plans to turn the former Ministry of Defence Bicester base — which is about half a mile (0.8 kilometres) from the village — into housing for male migrants. The government says the site is “designed to be largely self-sufficient to minimize any impact on the local community”.

Residents in the Oxfordshire village have raised fears about safety, crime and the effect on house prices in the affluent area, 50 miles (80 kilometres) northwest of London. Supporters called the declaration of independence a victory for people power and local democracy. Some media coverage compared the gesture to the classic 1949 Ealing comedy film Passport to Pimlico, in which a London neighbourhood breaks away from Britain.

Others said the campaign had a darker side and stirred up fear of newcomers. Some backers of the Piddington referendum compared their fight against the asylum accommodation to the 1940 Battle of Britain against Nazi Germany.

Comparing unauthorised immigration to an invasion has become increasingly common among politicians including Nigel Farage of Reform UK, and far-right groups that have been active in organising and attending anti-immigrant protests.

The UK has seen a wave of anti-immigrant demonstrations since riots erupted two years ago after a teenager killed three young girls during a dance class near Liverpool. The UK-born attacker had been wrongly identified on social media as a Muslim asylum seeker.