48 pointsby marojejian5 hours ago19 comments
  • vereloan hour ago
    Please add the measurement system to the title. The times should know better...
    • aduwah22 minutes ago
      I have asked ChatGPT to draw me an image of a 97 degree celsius t-rex and the result was absolutely amazing
      • verelo18 minutes ago
        Don't hold out on us now...
    • dhdjddhx18 minutes ago
      It seems that this headline is following the guidelines of the times style guide: "In general, ordinary references to temperature do not specify the scale."
      • verelo11 minutes ago
        Wow is that actually their guideline?
    • nkrisc10 minutes ago
      Well it’s definitely not 97 K, it’s definitely not 97 C, so it’s probably 97 F which would put it in the same general ballpark as nearly all terrestrial vertebrates.
    • cr189541 minutes ago
      Though it should be pretty obvious from this context that it's not 97 Celsius or Kelvin.
      • verelo39 minutes ago
        Sure, but 'F' is a lot shorter than "whichever unit doesn't kill the dinosaur."
      • 17 minutes ago
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    • t-writescode23 minutes ago
      The Times is a US magazine. The odds of them picking a US unit of measurement are very high.
      • john_strinlaia minute ago
        it is also reporting on a scientific paper, from US authors, which used celsius
      • verelo15 minutes ago
        The same newspaper uses Celsius in its climate reporting, including the article below. Apparently the units depend on which extinction we’re discussing. One extra letter would save the guesswork.

        https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/02/climate/united-nations-cl...

        Edit: Removed the headline quotation because the search listing and article heading differ.

  • lioeters3 hours ago
    From the paper, that is: 36.3 ± 2.5°C.
    • Galilyou3 hours ago
      Phew! Thank you! I feel for the ungodly fahrenheit again
      • nkrisc8 minutes ago
        I quite like Fahrenheit. The 0 to 100F (-17 to 37C) range perfectly encapsulates the range of outdoor temperatures I expect to encounter during the year. If the forecast is outside that range, it’s going to be miserable.
      • nmoon3 hours ago
        Fahrenheit is the superior measure
        • rf153 hours ago
          counterpoint: it doesn't matter, since you need to learn relevant boiling/freezing temperatures on both scales anyway.

          As a european: F is the only american system that is easy to use and reason with (considering its 0-100 range is spanning the "doable" temp range of too-cold to too-hot), unlike other imperial systems for lengths and whatnot.

          • t-writescode21 minutes ago
            I would argue feet and inches are pretty good too, since there’s a foot on your body, and a thumb, too, for inches.

            Weight, mass and considerable distances, I’ll grant you, though.

        • WarmWash3 hours ago
          Better for day to day life, worse for science and engineering.
          • jandrewrogers7 minutes ago
            Kelvin is superior for science and engineering but doesn't arbitrarily anchor the scale to the freezing and boiling point of water in the way Celsius and Fahrenheit both do.

            273.15 Kelvin doesn't roll off the tongue like 0°C or 32°F.

          • msm_3 hours ago
            Is it really better for day to day life? I am certain that it only appears so because you're used to it. I think for day to day life they're both roughly equivalent.

            Of course, for me Celsius is more natural and intuitive, but again - that's because I'm used to it.

            • WarmWashan hour ago
              You can basically put a "%" after a fahrenheit temperature and read it as "percentage of a really hot day" and you'll get a pretty good idea what it feels like outside.

              It's pretty well calibrated as a 0-100 scale for human temperature perception.

              • esperentan hour ago
                I moved from a cold climate to a tropical climate and let me assure you there's no human universal understanding of what's comfortably hot or cold, definitely not to the point of putting a percentage on it. I can walk around in a T-shirt and shorts at 17C (62f) while locals will be wrapping up in scarves and talking about how freezing it is. Meanwhile they'll be fairly comfortable at 35C (95f), at least if the humidity isn't high, and I'll be stuck in with the AC blasting.

                So in other words Fahrenheit is a western centric measurement (or at least, temperature climate centric), while Celsius is universal.

                • nkrisc4 minutes ago
                  The subjective experience doesn’t really matter because many places in the US will experience a 100 degree F range over an entire year. So it’s not the “comfortable range” but the actual range you’ll get in many parts of the US (whether you like it or not).
              • konart38 minutes ago
                You can do the same thing with celsius if you live in a country with a different temperature "calendar".

                I'm used to the idea that 0C is what splits the year between cold season and warm season. Obviously people from California will see it differently, for example.

                So where I live it is like this:

                30 or more - hot

                15..30 warm

                0..15 chilly

                -15..0 calendar winter

                -30..-15 real winter

                ..-30 - freezing, kinds younger than 12 don't go to school

                • WarmWash16 minutes ago
                  Sure, but we usually don't judge things on a scale from -30 to +30.

                  Judging anything on a scale from 0-10 (or 0-100) is very common.

            • antif3 hours ago
              100F is about peak summer heat; 0F is about peak winter chills. Works great for describing weather .. in various places.
              • jjtheblunt39 minutes ago
                Arizona says "hold my boiling beer".
              • an hour ago
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          • konart3 hours ago
            >Better for day to day life

            It is not.

        • deagle503 hours ago
          really is, and I grew up in celsius.
    • orbital-decay3 hours ago
      Thanks, I thought it was almost boiling.
      • 3 hours ago
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    • gibspaulding3 hours ago
      So 97.3 ± 4.5 °F for anyone else curious how the precision translates.
  • mepian3 hours ago
    I read the headline in Celsius and thought that they were a bit too hot.
    • unsnap_biceps2 hours ago
      Would add a new fun dimension to Jurassic Park.

      "Quick! Climb to 300 meters above sea level and the trex will boil and we will be safe!"

      • bel835 minutes ago
        to make it even more egregious:

        "Quick! Climb to about 1000 feet above sea level and the trex will boil and we will be safe!"

        • dmoy7 minutes ago
          I know you were talking about a mountain or something, but "climb to <altitude>" does make one think about this exchange which would be in feet, not meters:

          "climb to FL20 and the flying dinosaur thing will break" could work though

          Since, annoyingly, international altitudes are done in increments of 1000 feet (ish, handwaving)

  • john_strinlai3 hours ago
    i know its the nytimes, so we can assume american units, but i find it sort of crazy that even throughout the body of the article it doesnt ever say "fahrenheit".
    • BugsJustFindMe3 hours ago
      It doesn't need to. Any other unit would be either insanely cold or insanely hot.
      • skrebbel3 hours ago
        Given that it’s a shouty headline in a major publication, that’s what I would have expected.
    • bthrn3 hours ago
      Common sense suggests that living creatures are likely not boiling when they have a mild fever.
      • forestry3 minutes ago
        This is what I told my chemistry teacher in high school when he marked me down for not including units, too.
      • john_strinlai3 hours ago
        i am not a paleontologist and there have been many extremely weird living creatures over the time earth has been around.

        and as the sibling comment mentions, i am primed for science articles to be metric.

        • falserum3 hours ago
          I’m metric all the way, but if it would use metric, it still should unambiguously state: C
          • john_strinlai3 hours ago
            indeed! my "common sense" is to always state the units you're working with, no matter how obvious you think it is.

            at least, that was the concept was drilled into me throughout all my schooling. perhaps that has changed in the last few decades.

      • vojtapol3 hours ago
        Common sense would be using metric units in science-related article.
        • SoftTalker3 hours ago
          It's a US-based newspaper written for the general public. Common sense would say it's using US units.
        • petcat3 hours ago
          Americans don't use Celsius when talking about their body temperatures, and that's who the audience is.
          • StilesCrisis3 hours ago
            Americans don't use Celsius for anything except scientists talking with other scientists.
            • d_sem21 minutes ago
              that hasn't been my experience. Its widely used in engineering and has been for decades.
            • ericpruitt20 minutes ago
              A lot of monitoring software defaults to displaying hardware temperatures in Celsius regardless of the locale, and I've gotten so accustomed to knowing what a reasonable temperature is for different components that I personally never change the display units.
  • strongwaddle3 hours ago
    'Hotter than a crocodile, cooler than a chickennnnn....'

    is the opening line to a great song i'll never get to hear.

  • code_biologist3 hours ago
    Repost from a different thread: Related only topically, a 1hr YouTube talk I enjoyed a lot: "Hatchling T. rex and the Evolution of Vertebrate Parental Care" by Nick Longrich: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd0dR2n9hLA

    He's a paleontologist and the talk starts with some pretty interesting statistical analysis aiming to estimate T rex clutch sizes (66 eggs) and hatchling weights (1.5kg) as well as T rex parental care. It ends with looking at evolutionary history trends in increasing parental investment in radically different animals.

    He talks a little slow, so a little playback speed bump won't go amiss.

  • SP326919 minutes ago
    I’m missing Marc Bolan.
    • fsckboy18 minutes ago
      is it you, metal guru?
  • isomorphic3 hours ago
    https://archive.is/20260916181240/https://www.nytimes.com/20...

    (Even the NY Times gift link requires a login.)

    • cr189535 minutes ago
      I wonder if that's triggered if NYT determines that a gift link is being widely used?
  • laweijfmvo3 hours ago
    How do we know its body temperature was 97 degrees, and simply not the environment was 97 degrees?
    • altcognito3 hours ago
      They compared against crocodilian teeth and those teeth were at a different temperature. Crocodilian teeth are known to be at a similar temperature to their environment because they are known to be cold blooded.

      It is correct to say that we don't know they were warm blooded, just that their body temps were likely the given observed temperature.

    • cwmma3 hours ago
      If it was environmental then you'd expect it to fluctuate over time, but they also checked it against an animal they knew to be cold blooded, if it was environmental you'd expect them to be the same, but that animal was calculated by the same method to be colder.
    • pixl973 hours ago
      What environment would stay at a constant 97 degrees?
      • surgi3 hours ago
        Europe this summer? /jk
        • 3 hours ago
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  • ChrisMarshallNY3 hours ago
    Wouldn't be surprised if the smaller raptors had even higher body temps.
    • layer83 hours ago
      Seems sensible, given that birds have higher body temperatures.
      • hedgehog3 hours ago
        I didn't know this so I looked up the number for farm chickens, according to University of Kentucky (seems appropriate) they have a body temperature of "between 105°F and 107°F (40.6° and 41.7°C) ... Smaller chicken breeds have a higher body temperature than larger breeds"

        https://afs.mgcafe.uky.edu/poultry/chapter-7-air-temperature

  • Razenganan hour ago
    That's not even a half circle
  • ButlerianJihad38 minutes ago
    I can testify that my baseline body temperature (measured sublingually) is 97.6℉

    By the way, Google Fit's body-temperature entry is cool, but when it comes to "Location", why is "mouth" in the middle of the list and next to some other, unrelated parts? How is the list being sorted?

  • globular-toast3 hours ago
    Farenheit. So a little bit cooler than us.
  • ohyoutravel3 hours ago
    This is really interesting, worth a read. Wouldn’t be surprised if the even larger dinosaurs had even higher body temps!
  • micromacrofoot3 hours ago
    > Up until the early 2000s, dinosaurs were thought to be rather reptilian and therefore probably coldblooded, Dr. Wiemann said. That began to change as multiple lines of evidence from geochemistry studies and CT scans of fossils showed they were warm-blooded. Dr. Wiemann had previously found that T. rex had a fast metabolism, but she said the new study did an “exquisite” job of zeroing in on a precise body temperature.

    > To take the body temperature of a long extinct, school-bus-size predator, scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, used a clever geochemistry technique on fossilized teeth, including two from “Thomas,” a famous T. rex in the collection of the National History Museum of Los Angeles County.

    fascinating

    we've also learned more about the air at the time via teeth, https://nautil.us/the-data-in-a-dinos-smile-1229729

    • SoftTalker3 hours ago
      It intuitively makes sense. A cold-blooded creature of that mass would take a long time to properly warm up or cool down. Most modern cold-blooded animals are small, e.g. frogs, snakes, lizards. They can move into the sunlight or shade as needed and pretty quickly change temperature.
  • modzu3 hours ago
    id assumed as much since seeing jurassic park in 1996
    • kilroy1233 hours ago
      It's actually older, from 1993.
  • moomoo113 hours ago
    i will now believe this information until it becomes outdated in the future, at which point i will believe that information until it becomes outdated later
    • mindcandy3 hours ago
      Great! That's how knowledge is supposed to work.
      • partyficial3 hours ago
        that's not knowledge - that's just theory and belief.

        you know, like religion.

        • 3 hours ago
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  • juancn2 hours ago
    Wow! Close to boiling! /s