The T. rex may have been smarter than previously thought

There is some criticism of this paper:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;TomHoltzPaleo&#x2F;status&#x2F;1611853690654150657" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;TomHoltzPaleo&#x2F;status&#x2F;1611853690654150657</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;antrodemon&#x2F;status&#x2F;1611540542269317122" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;antrodemon&#x2F;status&#x2F;1611540542269317122</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;AWannabeGhost&#x2F;status&#x2F;1611781106516492288" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;AWannabeGhost&#x2F;status&#x2F;1611781106516492288</a>

The author of the paper, Suzana Herculano-Houzel, made a nice video that talks about it as well:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=a1tEnm53zDs">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=a1tEnm53zDs</a>

To my untrained eye, dinosaurs all look the same (generally speaking), despite being on a timescale of hundreds of millions of years.<p>I always wondered why during such a long time they never evolved into something brighter (or their version of us). I understand evolution pressure (or lack of) and everything but still this is weird. I feel that this is something that is rarely addressed, despite being a good example of how evolution works and what drives it.

&gt;“What if the asteroid hadn’t happened?” Herculano-Houzel said, referring to the cosmic collision thought to have driven most dinosaurs to extinction. “That’s a whole other world that would have been terrifying.”<p>I wonder if they would have developed nuclear weapons and dropped them on their fellow dinosaurs. Terrifying!

Downloadable research paper:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.biorxiv.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;10.1101&#x2F;2022.06.20.496834v3" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.biorxiv.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;10.1101&#x2F;2022.06.20.496834v3</a>

I read the article and find myself thinking Michael Crichton made these same (supposedly now new) assertions, based on scientific evidence from research into the topic as a medical doctor himself, 30 years ago, and then based a very famous book and later movie on it.

Reminds of the running joke in Land of the Lost where Will Ferrel&#x27;s character, Dr. Marshall, keeps slagging off the T. rex for it&#x27;s small brain.

Maybe the T.rex were farmers, cultivating livestock for their own use.

The T.Rex, just like all the other dinosaurs of that last era when the Chuxhulub asteroid impact, wasn&#x27;t very smart: it obviously was too short-sighted to bother developing a decent space program to deal with asteroid impacts.<p>Millions of years later, the dominant species of this planet is just as short-sighted and stupid, if not more so, since we know about the T.Rex&#x27;s demise by asteroid impact.