Dinosaur Files
How warm was the earth when dinosaurs lived?
People say that the earth was 30 degrees warmer when the dinosaurs lived, but I can't find any evidence on that. Can someone please help? Also, include if the temperature was Fahrenheit or Celsius. If the world was NOT 30 degrees warmer when dinosaurs lived, what was the warmest the earth has ever been?
Public Comments
- It was warmer than today, but not by as much as 30°C! At no stage of the Mesozoic, when the non-birdy dinos roamed, were there ice caps in the polar regions. Generalising for the whole globe though all of the relevant 165 million years or so wouldn't be wise, but that aspect did remain constant. Towards the end of the Cretaceous, which ended with the famous mass die-in event(s), the temperature was dropping somewhat. That's reflected in the plantlife to some extent. For examples, plants requiring what we would regard as tropical conditions no longer grew far beyond the tropics. However, rather than being the start of some kind of on-going trend, the weather warmed up again after the Cretaceous.
