Regulation of Body Temperature by Some Mesozoic Marine Reptiles

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Abstract
Warm-Blooded Reptiles?: Existing reptiles are not thought to be endothermic, but what about extinct species? Three large extinct swimming reptiles, the ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and mosasaurs, were active predators in the Mesozoic oceans. Bernard et al. (p. 1379 ; see the Perspective by Motani ) investigated their metabolism by analyzing the oxygen isotopes in their teeth, compared with fish in deposits from a variety of ocean environments. The data imply that the ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, which were both pursuit predators, probably controlled their own temperature. The data for the mosasaurs, which are thought to have hunted by ambush, are more equivocal.