In the article “Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of the Dinosaurs,†Stephen Jay Gould puts forth three explanations that have been given for the demise of the dinosaurs: s*x, drugs, and disaster.
s*x: In the 1940’s a study was conducted on alligators to determine their tolerance for changes in the temperature. It was found that small alligators heated up and cooled down quickly and larger alligators heated up and cooled down more slowly (this is a function of size to surface area). The researchers speculated that dinosaurs lived in a time period where they lived close to their optimal temperature range. It is known that a slight warming trend occurred around the time the dinosaurs died off. The hypothesis is that the dinosaurs warmed up, not enough to kill them outright, but enough to sterilize them. The testicles of male mammals often function within a narrow temperature range.
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