As we know, the life of dinosaurs began with a hard-shelled egg. They came in a variety of shapes and sizes depending on the species, but all had shells with internal structures more similar to the eggs of modern birds than those of any living reptile.
But how long did a dinosaur’s life last? This life expectancy has been debated for many years as technology evolves and scientists discover more information.
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How many years did dinosaurs live?
In general, scientists can measure the age of some dinosaur species from the growth rings inside fossilized bones, much like they can tell the age of a tree from the rings inside its trunk.
Dinosaur fossils at the Ontario Museum. (Image: Narciso Arellano/Unsplash)
But this technique doesn’t work well in many species, because their bones grow continuously, so they don’t have well-defined growth rings. Additionally, some scientists argue that these dinosaur fossils can only tell us the creature’s age when it died.
According to BBC Science, some estimates of 100 to 200 years of lifespan for the largest herbivore species were based on comparisons with crocodiles and turtles, which have much slower metabolisms. The consensus now is that the dinosaurs Apatosaurus and Diplodocus, for example, probably lived only 70 or 80 years, which is about the same as an elephant today.
That said, the life expectancy of animals is related, in part, to their body size and, in part, to their type of metabolism, as well as their diet and environment. Dinosaur life spans probably ranged from tens to hundreds of years, but these estimates, based on the life spans of cold-blooded animals, would be too long if dinosaurs had metabolisms more similar to those of modern birds and mammals.
Dinosaur statue in a park in India. (Image: Vaibhav Pixels/Unsplash)
Because more recent evidence suggests that many dinosaurs had metabolisms more like those of birds, they probably did not have the same relative lifespans as large reptiles. It is possible, then, that sauropods lived to be 50 to 100 years old, large theropods a little less, and smaller dinosaurs could live to be about 10 or 20 years old. So the conclusion, according to a lot of research, is that the average lifespan of dinosaurs was 20 to 30 years.
2024-02-20 22:21:00
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