Was Tyrannosaurus as smart as a baboon?

There was a new paper about the number of neurons in dinosaurs. And it got a lot of press attention. But what was actually in the paper? And how smart might T. rex have been? We look at the paper and try to start answering some of these questions.

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[danielmcandrew]

Thanks so much for commenting on this. I couldn’t find anything talking about what as assumed and if the approach taken was actually viable or a case of someone assuming they knew all they needed to know even though they come from another discipline

[christosvoskresye]

Oh, if only there were a peer review process to make suggestions to authors of scientific papers!

[itzelpretzel]

I really hope the next revolution in paleontology is expanding our knowledge of dinosaur behavior. There could data out there that jus TVrequires cross disciplinary work and different approaches to be found.

[chrisrandom]

I doubt animals like T. Rex had primate like intelligence. But I believe it could problem solve. Same with other large therapods. They had to hunt to survive so I would think that would be part of it. Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought they had found some T. Rex specimens grouped together. (I could be wrong here.) If that's the case perhaps they may have developed small social groups? It's not hard to imagine really.

[jimmyquigley]

Most birds build things, nests. Some are big, some are quite sophisticated. We have needed tools for at least 5M years. A group of humans carrying pointy sticks could defend themselves. No stick they're bipedal cat-food.

[Spnozilla]

So another case of people jumping to conclusions based on a hypothesis. Not saying the neurologist was doing that but more so the people spreading misinformation