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In Life, the teeth of a T. Rex were formidable. Without doubt the most precious weapon of the Majestic Carnivore. But 66 million years after the king of dinosaurs left the Mesozoic scene, his fossilized flesh rippers and the size of the bananas find a new goal. The fossilized teeth of T. Rex – as well as claws of other species of dinosaurs – give chemical clues that can help researchers rebuild the ancient climate of the earth.
Germany scientists have disclosed the atmospheric secrets locked in the fossil Dino teeth by analyzing the isotopes of oxygen in ancient dental enamel. Reporting their conclusions in the Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesResearchers from the University of Göttingen, Johannes Gutenberg MAPIN University and Ruhr Bochum University suggest that T. Rex breathed was much richer in carbon dioxide than our current atmosphere. The levels of oxygen isotopes in the teeth of Dino from Europe, North America and Africa also suggest that the sum of the plant life of the earth was twice as active photosynthetically as the greenery of the planet. Thus, during the Mesozoic era, from 252 million to 66 million years ago, the biosphere and the atmosphere were very different from those of today.
More details on climate reconstruction suggest that the late Jurassic (about 150 million years ago) was marked by an atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration which was four times higher than the levels present on earth before the industrial revolution of the 19th century, when humans starting to pump greenhouse gases in the air. Scientists also found isotopic echoes of mass volcanic eruptions towards the end of the Cretaceous period (about 66 million years ago).
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The isotopic analysis of dinosaurs teeth allowed researchers to look further than ever in the ancient atmosphere of the earth – a major breakthrough in the field of paleoclimatology. The older, less reliable methods of ancient climate reconstruction were based on the measurement of carbonates of the soil and marine climatic proxys. It was the first time that scientists have used land vertebrates fossils to maintain past climates.
“Our method provides us with completely new information on the past of the earth,” said the main Dingsu Feng author of the Department of Geochemistry and Isotope Geology of the University of Göttingen in a press release. “We now have the possibility of using fossilized teeth enamel to study the composition of the atmosphere of early earth and the productivity of terrestrial and marine vegetation at the time. This is crucial for our understanding of long -term climate dynamics. ”
Main photo: The teeth of the dinosaurs fossils, like this tyrannosaurus rex, discovered at the Murray Ranch in Montana, retain signatures of the atmosphere that existed when the creatures wandered in the ground. Credit: © Naturalis Biodiversity Center.
