2024-05-01 18:04:29
T. rex‘s image has taken a hit over the past few years. First there was questioned his teeth – found that the impressive teeth may have been smaller, and perhaps even hidden behind the lips altogether, and now an international team of paleontologists, behavioral scientists and neuroscientists has concluded that T. rex was no more intelligent than the average lizard or crocodile.
The new study refutes the 2023 concluded that T. rex’s neuron count was a direct indicator of its intelligence. A version has been proposed that this indicates high cognitive skills. However, when the researchers repeated the method of the previous study, the results showed something completely different.
“The possibility that T. rex could have been as intelligent as a baboon is both fascinating and frightening, and could reshape our view of the past,” said Darren Naish, a paleontologist at the University of Southampton in England. – However, our study shows that all available data contradict this idea. They were more like intelligent giant crocodiles – but still adorable!”
To reach these conclusions, scientists had to examine the bigger picture of physiology – skeletal anatomy, bone histology, fossil traces and how modern dinosaur relatives behave. This was combined with available data on the size and shape of dinosaur brains.
After examining T. rex brain endocasts—an internal model of the cranial vault that once housed the dinosaur’s soft tissue—the researchers found that previous estimates of brain size were inflated, especially when it came to the important forebrain. The team says this happened because it didn’t take into account that dinosaurs, like reptiles, likely had a lot of cerebrospinal fluid in the cranial vault – so the model that the brain fills this entire cavity is misleading.
Unfortunately, the team says, in the case of T. rex, the estimates of the number of neurons were also too high. The number of neurons also correlates with body size—the larger a species is, the more it likely has—but when viewed in context with all the other information, it appears that the dinosaur’s cognitive abilities should have been more akin to those of crocodiles.
“The number of neurons is not a good indicator of cognitive ability, and using it to predict the mind of long-extinct species can lead to very misleading interpretations,” says Ornella Bertrand of the Miquel Crusafont Institute of Palaeontology in Catalonia, Spain.
“The intelligence of dinosaurs and other extinct animals is best determined by a range of evidence, from gross anatomy to fossil footprints, rather than estimates of neuron count alone,” says Hady George of the University of Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences in the UK.
The study is published žurnale „The Anatomical Record“.
Let’s look at „New Atlas“.
2024-05-01 18:04:29