How Dinosaurs May Have Influenced Human Aging

Although mammals, such as humans, can evolve long lifespans, they do so under constraints dating to the reign of the dinosaurs

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Have you ever wondered why animals, particularly birds, and some reptiles, especially turtles, live such long lives compared to mammals with the same body masses? According to molecular biogerontologist, Joao Pedro de Magalhaes, a professor at the Institute of Inflammation and Ageing at the University of Birmingham, this may be an evolutionary relict dating back to the age of the dinosaurs, which ended with their mass extinction around 66 million years ago.

Professor de Magalhaes, a leading aging expert who has devoted his entire professional life to understanding the genetic, cellular, and molecular mechanisms of aging, just published his fascinating hypothesis, “the longevity bottleneck” (ref). This hypothesis connects the long-term ecological and evolutionary effects that predatory dinosaurs had over the aging process in mammals, even up to this very day.

Some groups of animals have escaped these effects: it long been observed that most birds and some reptiles and amphibians present few or no signs of aging, whereas all mammals, including humans, show a conspicuous aging process. Why?