Stupid fool or smart muscle? Debate ended Tyrannosaurus rex The wisdom continues, with a recent paper leaning into the original theory that these fearsome giants weren’t all that smart.
One of the world’s most notorious dinosaurs, a controversial 2023 study suggests, Tyrannosaurus rexcould be as intelligent as modern monkeys, raising suspicions among other researchers who have now put their receipts on the table.
“This possibility is Tyrannosaurus rex “It could be as intelligent as a baboon, fascinating and terrifying, with the potential to reshape our view of the past,” University of Southampton paleontologist Darren Naish explained when the new results were published in April.
“But our research shows that all the data we have is against that idea.”
Led by zoologist Kai Caspar Heinrich Heine University, GermanyResearchers found that brain size measurements in the 2023 study were inaccurate, inflating estimates of the number of neurons that prehistoric reptiles could fit into their heads, especially when forebrain.
This overestimation is mainly due to the original paper assumption Tyrannosaurus rex Naish explained in a blog post that the brain took up most of the intracranial space, but this was not the case for most dinosaurs.
Relationship between brain and body mass in terrestrial vertebrates. dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex The brain-to-body size ratio is similar to that of living reptiles. (Gutierrez-Ibanez)
What’s more, Kasper and colleagues argue that neuron counts don’t reliably track intelligence. In the case of birds, it has long been thought that their smaller heads meant they had fewer neurons and were therefore less intelligent.
But we later learned that birds such as crows can outperform primates at certain cognitive tasks despite their smaller heads, leading to the conclusion that factors such as connectivity patterns in addition to brain size Play a greater role in determining intelligence.
“We think it’s not a good idea to predict the intelligence of extinct species when we can only rely on endocasts to reconstruct neuronal counts,” Kasper said.
Instead, a variety of evidence, from anatomy to behavioral clues, and more comparisons with modern animals are needed to produce more accurate estimates of prehistoric intelligence.
“Significantly improved understanding of the relationship between neuronal number and other biological variables in living animals, especially cognitive performance, is needed before more accurate predictions can be made,” the team wrote in the paper.
Characterization of the relationships between reptilian taxa and their brain complexity suggests that the brains of tyrannosaurids were not that different from those of crocodilian fish species. (Casper et al., anatomical records2024).
So where does this leave Tyrannosaurus rex?
Recent behavioral clues do suggest that the notorious prehistoric reptiles may have been surprisingly social, hunting in packs, but they’re not enough to indicate the primate’s level of intelligence.
“They’re more like giant smart crocodiles, which is also fascinating,” Naish said.
This research was published in anatomical records.
An earlier version of this article was published in May 2024.
