| T. Rex nu a fost atât de inteligent pe cât ni s-a făcut să credem |
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| International |
| Miercuri, 01 Mai 2024 20:56 |
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While we don't like to talk ill of the dead, new physiological analysis has found that the king of the dinosaurs was not so smart after all. It upends previous research that last year likened the brain and neuronal composition of the Tyrannosaurus rex to that of a primate.
It's been a rough year or two for the long extinct dinosaur. First, we questioned their teeth, finding that those iconic chompers could very much have been smaller and hidden behind lips, and now an international team of paleontologists, behavioral scientists and neurologists have concluded that the T. rex wasn't smarter than your average lizard or crocodile. Why all the hate, science?
The new study kicks dirt in the face of the 2023 findings that the dinosaur's neuron count was a direct indication of its intelligence. It proposed that this would indicate high cognitive skills that could be backed up by evidence of 'evolved' cognitive skills such as tool use. But when the scientists replicated the previous study's method, the results told a very different story. “The possibility that T. rex might have been as intelligent as a baboon is fascinating and terrifying, with the potential to reinvent our view of the past”, said Darren Naish, a paleontologist from the University of Southampton. “But our study shows how all the data we have is against this idea. They were more like smart giant crocodiles, and that’s just as fascinating.”
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