Submitted by Xerrostron t3_xtuh86 in askscience
Moonduderyan t1_iqup6kk wrote
Reply to comment by regular_modern_girl in How much does the size of an animal impact whether it is cold or warm Blooded? by Xerrostron
Endotherms rely on circulation as well, that's the whole way they distribute heat across the body. Our heat moves across the body all the time. It's why our hands and feet get cold, because our body moved the heat to the vital organ when outside temperatures are relatively colder. Adipose tissue is only reliable so long as you can actually get heat to the tissue.
Also weren't there terristrial crocodiles which were active chase predators such as boverisuchus?
Where did you the info that marine reptiles didn't regulate their body temperature? I just found a paper stating the marine reptiles probably controlled their body temperature.
regular_modern_girl t1_isd3ydw wrote
There were terrestrial predatory crocodiles, but they weren’t anywhere near the size of large predatory dinosaurs (nor even present day saltwater crocodiles, let alone the even larger aquatic crocodiles that existed in the Mesozoic).
Last I’d heard, most marine reptiles from the Mesozoic were not assumed to be warm-blooded because non-archosaur diapsids like that simply weren’t assumed to have evolved endothermy, but I haven’t really kept up on speculation about that, so it’s possible the consensus has shifted with at least some of them (as obviously dinosaurs themselves have only been widely-assumed to be endothermic relatively recently).
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