[Rockhounds] New Research Reveals That Dinosaurs Were Not As Smart as We Thought

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

Dinosaurs were as smart as reptiles but not as intelligent as monkeys, as
former research suggests.

An international team of paleontologists, behavioral scientists, and
neurologists have re-examined brain size and structure in dinosaurs and
concluded they behaved more like crocodiles and lizards.

In a study published last year, it was claimed that dinosaurs like *T. rex* had
an exceptionally high number of neurons and were substantially more
intelligent than assumed. It was claimed that these high neuron counts
could directly inform on intelligence, metabolism and life history, and
that *T. rex* was rather monkey-like in some of its habits. Cultural
transmission of knowledge as well as tool use were cited as examples of
cognitive traits that it might have possessed.
Critique of Neuron Count Methodology

However the new study, published in *The Anatomical Record*, involving
the University
of Bristol’s <https://scitechdaily.com/tag/university-of-bristol/> Hady
George, Dr.Darren Naish (University of Southampton) led by Dr Kai Caspar
(Heinrich Heine University) with Dr Cristian Gutierrez-Ibanez (University
of Alberta) and Dr Grant Hurlburt (Royal Ontario Museum) takes a closer
look at techniques used to predict both brain size and neuron numbers in
dinosaur brains. The team found that previous assumptions about brain size
in dinosaurs, and the number of neurons their brains contained, were
unreliable.

https://scitechdaily.com/popular-myth-debunked-new-research-reveals-that-dinosaurs-were-not-as-smart-as-we-thought/