Dim-witted dope or brainy brawn? Argument over T. Rex’s smarts continues, with a recent paper leaning towards the original theory that these fearsome giants weren’t smart.
A controversial study in 2023 revealed one of the world’s most famous dinosaurs. Tyrannosaurus rexit may be as intelligent as modern monkeys, making some researchers very skeptical when they bring their receipts to the table.
“That’s possible T. rex it could be as intelligent as a curious and terrifying owl, with the potential to improve our understanding of the past,” explained University of Southampton paleontologist Darren Naish when the new findings were released in April.
“But our study shows that all the data we have contradicts this idea.”
It is led by zoologist Kai Caspar from Heinrich Heine University in GermanyThe researchers found that the brain measurements in the 2023 study were inaccurate, further estimating the number of neurons that prehistoric reptiles could fit in their noggin, especially in forebrain.
This exaggeration is largely due to the paper’s original assumption T. rex’s The brain filled most of the endocranial space, which is not true in most dinosaurs, Naish explained in a blog post.
The relationship between brain and body weight in living vertebrates. Dinosaurs love T. rex they have brain to size ratios for reptiles. (Gutierrez-Ibanez)
Also, Caspar and his colleagues argue that the numbers of marrons do not follow rationally. Take birds for example – it was long thought that their large heads meant they had fewer neurons and were therefore less intelligent.
But we have studied birds such as crows that can outperform primates on some cognitive tasks despite their small heads, leading to the conclusion that factors other than brain size, such as connection mechanisms, play a major role in determining intelligence.
“We argue that it is not a good practice to predict intelligence in extinct species when neuron counts reconstructed from endocasts are what we have to go on,” said Casper.
Instead, multiple lines of evidence, from anatomy to records on behavior and other comparisons with modern animals are needed to make strong assumptions about prehistoric intelligence.
“An improved understanding of the relationship between the number of neurons and other biological variables, especially cognitive function, in existing animals is needed,” before making predictions, the team writes in their paper.
The relationship between the groups of reptiles as well as the display of their complex brains, shows that the tyrannosaurid brain is not very different from that of the crocodylomorphs. (Caspar et al., The Anatomical Record2024).
So where does that leave T. rex?
Recent pattern scores suggest that prehistoric reptiles may have been highly social, hunting in packs, but that’s not enough to demonstrate primate-level intelligence.
“They were like big smart crocodiles, and it’s just fun,” said Naish.
This research was published in The Anatomical Record.
The first version of this article was published in May 2024.