Re-calibrating the snake palaeothermometer

Anastassia M. Makarieva (), Victor G. Gorshkov () and Bai-Lian Li
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Anastassia M. Makarieva: Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute
Victor G. Gorshkov: Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute
Bai-Lian Li: Ecological Complexity and Modeling Laboratory, University of California

Nature, 2009, vol. 460, issue 7255, E2-E3

Abstract: Abstract Arising from: J. J. Head et al. Nature 457, 715–717 (2009)10.1038/nature07671 ; Head et al. reply In a recent study1 a new proxy for palaeoclimate reconstructions was proposed on the basis of a theoretical approach linking the largest body sizes to ambient temperature in extant taxa of air-breathing poikilotherms2,3. The value of the largest fossil snake’s body length was used to estimate the mean annual temperature (MAT) for the Palaeocene neotropics of ΔT = 3.8–7.2 °C above the modern value1. Here we argue that the reported temperature difference is a twofold overestimate and obtain a corrected estimate of ΔT = 1.9–3.7 °C using the taxon-specific metabolic scaling exponent α = 0.17 for boid snakes. The importance of using relevant taxon-specific information in case of one-taxon-based temperature reconstructions1 while leaving the theoretically derived generic α values (such as α = 0.33 used by Head et al.1) for broad inter-taxonomic analyses2,3 is emphasized.

Date: 2009
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DOI: 10.1038/nature08223

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