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Extinction of the Dinosaurs | Flying Dinosaurs
Intelligence  | Life Spans | Stegosaurus' Second Brain
The Color of Dinosaur Skin  | The Texture of Dinosaur Skin
T-Rex as Scavenger | Warm-blooded vs. Cold-blooded

 

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Life Spans
How old did individual dinosaurs live to be? Like so much else about dinosaurs, no one knows for sure. We can only look at related modern animals and make educated guesses.

The larger modern reptiles, which are more or less distantly related to dinosaurs, can live to be very old. Large crocodiles can reach ages of 100 or more; turtles can reach ages of 200 years or more. For these reasons, it is reasonable, if not very likely, that large dinosaurs reached 100 or 200 years of age, perhaps even more.

If dinosaurs were warm-blooded, the comparison with reptiles is not as valid. But when you consider that elephants and humans regularly reach 70 years or more, it isn't unreasonable to think that the dinosaurs -- and especially the larger sauropods -- lived to be at least as old.












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