Word: cold
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Paleontologist Ho depends on neither time travel nor thermometers for measuring ancient body temperatures. Instead, he works with collagen, a protein found in human and animal connective tissue and skeletal structures. Aware that the proportion of an imino acid, hydroxyproline, is lower in the collagen of cold-water fish than in fish that swim in warmer waters, Ho reasoned that the composition of collagen in warm-blooded animals might vary with their body temperatures...
...Cold-Blooded. Assuming that the variation had been similar in prehistoric animals, Ho turned to late Pleistocene epoch (10,000 to 200,000 years ago) fossil remains containing well-preserved collagen. Chemically analyzing the collagen in fossil specimens recovered from Los Angeles' famed La Brea tar pits, he applied his formula and calculated the temperatures of such extinct species as the browsing ground sloth, the dire wolf, the short-faced bear and the saber-toothed...
Paleontologist Ho's findings have already led him to the conclusion that Pleistocene mammals did not have substantially higher body temperatures-as many scientists believed-to protect them against the cold...
...plans to turn his attention to cold-blooded fossil animals, whose temperatures, unlike those of warmblooded creatures, varied with climatic changes. By using his collagen method to take their body temperatures, he believes, he can determine the approximate temperature of the prehistoric climate in which they lived...
...Swordfish have to be coddled into taking a bait; with a full stomach only the most dessert-happy sword can be tempted by mackerel or squid. Fishermen have been known to make ten or more passes before a lazing giant without achieving so much as a blink from those cold blue eyes. On the wildly illogical assumption that he does swallow the bait, the battle is generally lost then and there; the only soft part of a swordfish, naturally, is his mouth. More often he is foul-hooked-in the dorsal fin, back or cheek-as he rolls around, batting...