Tyrannosaurus rex at centre of debate over dinosaur intelligence

Visitors look at a skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex at the French National Museum of Natural History in Paris in 2018.Surmising even the physical appearance of a dinosaur – or any extinct animal – based on its fossils is a tricky proposition, with so many uncertainties involved. Assessing a dinosaur’s intelligence, considering the innumerable factors contributing to that trait, is exponentially more difficult.

They instead suggested a more holistic approach to assess the braininess of Tyrannosaurus or any extinct animal, with brain size and neuronal count considered alongside other factors such as an animal’s anatomy and ecology, data from living relatives, and fossil evidence about how it moved about and fed that offer insight into its life.

“Their conclusion hinges on a single extremely important point: whether theropods like T. rex shared their relationship with their extant warm-blooded ostrich and chicken cousins, or with their more distant living relatives, crocodiles. I said the former, because I compared theropods to ostriches and chickens; they now say the latter,” Herculano-Houzel added.There are problems in trying to gauge intelligence from brain neuron count, Caspar said.

The dinosaurs, aside from their bird descendants, disappeared 66 million years ago after an asteroid struck Earth. In two centuries of scientific study, dinosaurs are coming into better focus, though plenty of uncertainties remain about Tyrannosaurus and the others.

Brain Dinosaur Study Intelligence Caspar Size Herculano-Houzel Vanderbilt University University Of Maryland Earth

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