Tyrannosaurus rex It was almost as smart as modern crocodiles and other reptiles, according to a team of researchers investigating recent claims that Cretaceous predators may have been as smart as monkeys.
In their work, the team specifically referred to one paper published last year in the journal Comparative neurology. The paper, written by neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel, concluded that theropods like Tyrannosaurus had a “monkey-like” number of neurons, “which would make these animals not only huge, but also long-lived and endowed with flexible cognition.”
The new team’s work rejects these claims, arguing that theropod dinosaurs likely had “significantly lower neuron counts than previously thought”; The team added that the number of neurons and relative brain size were “flawed” proxies for measuring the intelligence of ancient animals and other aspects of the creatures’ biology.
“We argue that it is not good practice to predict the intelligence of extinct species if we only have to go on using neuron numbers reconstructed from endocasts,” said Kai Caspar, a biologist at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and lead author of the study, in a university statement Bristol release.
Dino organs – including brains –not particularly durable over tens of millions of years. If this is the case, this is usually the case Things like dinosaur skin, not internal organs. Actually, the oldest fossilized skin is almost 300 million years old and therefore much older than T Rex. So scientists are turning to other lines of evidence to determine how bright the animals were.
Herculano-Houzel’s work used an existing database of neuron numbers in extant sauropsids (a group that includes birds and squamates) and scaled it to dinosaurs and pterosaurs, which have been extinct for about 66 million years. “Readers should analyze the evidence and draw their own conclusions,” Herculano-Houzel said L.A. Times. “That’s what science is all about!”
In the animal kingdom there are a host of intelligent creatures; When Gizmodo asked experts which animal could develop human-level intelligence in the future, they answered some interesting – and diverse – answers. Lots of animals (including reptiles!) Use toolsand some (except monkeys) Show self-confidenceeven if they I still fall for magic tricks. But it’s easier to study the animals that exist today than to extrapolate the intelligence of an animal whose fossilized brain isn’t even there to poke and prod, let alone the intelligence of a creature that needs to be subjected to tests .
“The possibility that T Rex “The realization that it could have been as intelligent as a baboon is fascinating and frightening and has the potential to reinvent our view of the past,” said Darren Naish, a paleozoologist at the University of Southampton and co-author of the study, in same press release. “But our study shows that all the data we have speaks against this idea. They were more like intelligent giant crocodiles, and that’s just as fascinating.”
Theropods – and in particular T Rex– evoke a special level of passion. After all, they were particularly fearsome predators and have an outsized presence in popular culture compared to other dinosaurs. Even if T Rex wasn’t as smart as modern monkeys, it’s still a very scary animal. I would prefer researchers to debate the intelligence of times long past T Rex as trying out an unfortunate experiment to find out how smart they are when they’re still alive… I think I’ve read this script before.
More: Which animal will develop human-level intelligence in the future?