NPR Science LISTEN FOLLOW NPR App Apple Podcasts Spotify Amazon Music iHeart Radio YouTube Music RSS link Science Searching for dinosaur secrets in crocodile bones February 5, 20266:00 AM ET Ari Daniel Dinos and crocs Listen 4:58 4:58 Transcript Toggle more options Download Embed Embed iframe src"https:www.npr.orgplayerembednx-s1-5693856nx-s1-9632231" width"100" height"290" frameborder"0" scrolling"no" title"NPR embedded audio player" Transcript By looking at thin slices of crocodile bones, University of Cape Town paleobiologist Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan has concluded that researchers may have been overestimating some dinosaur ages. "It changes how we think about dinosaur growth," she says. Tommy Trenchard for NPR hide caption toggle caption Tommy Trenchard for NPR Until now, estimating how old a dinosaur was when it died has been a fairly simple process just count up the growth rings in its fossilized bones. "We always thought that those rings were formed annually," says Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan, a paleobiologist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. In other words, much like tree rings, the idea was that roughly one ring was laid down each year. Global Health How a Black fossil digger became a superstar in the very white world of paleontology "And then you can plot that and you can work out the growth rate of the dinosaur," explains Chinsamy-Turan. "And that's what all of us were doing me included." For example, this technique suggested that it took 20-some years f
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