(Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library/Getty Images)
Nature's Science Alert has a post about Tyrannosaurs rex. Ok, just how smart was T. rex? Back in 2023, when a controversial paper postulated that T. rex was about as intelligent as modern monkeys, most researchers were skeptical. Now, a new study "How smart was T. rex? Testing the claims of exceptional cognition in dinosaurs and the application of neuron count estimates in paleontological research", which was published in the journal The Anatomical Record, explains why that isn't likely.
"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," explains University of Southampton paleontologist Darren Naish. "But our study shows how all the data we have is against this idea."
Led by zoologist Kai Caspar from Heinrich Heine University in Germany, the new study found that the brain size measurements in the 2023 study were inaccurate, inflating estimates on the number of neurons the prehistoric reptiles could fit in their noggin, particularly in the forebrain.
This overestimation was primarily due to the original paper assuming T. rex's brain filled up most of the endocranial space, which isn't true in most dinosaurs, Naish explains in a blog post.
