During the 200 million years that dinosaurs roamed the land, the oceans were ruled by formerly land-dwelling reptiles. Of these, ichthyosaurs adopted dolphin-like forms, plesiosaurs became sea lion-like, and mosasaurs occupied crocodile-like ‘ambush’ predator roles.
Our warm bodies come at such a huge metabolic cost that experts cannot agree on why this ability has evolved at all. How do we and other animals come to stay warm, whilst keeping our cool?
James Hutton was a Scottish geologist, rightly regarded as the father of modern geology. He made many contributions to the natural sciences, but his crowning achievement was the idea of what would come to be known as 'uniformitarianism’.