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Therapod dinosaurs had primate-like numbers of neurons
- superkuh 4y agoHere is a link to the actual article that allows you to download, print, and copy from the text. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.20.496834v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.20.496834v1 It should probably replace the cloudflared, paywalled, and DRM'd wiley.com link.
- dang 4y agoOk, we've changed to that from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/cne.25453 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/cne.25453. Thanks!
- dang 4y agoRecent and related: The T. rex may have been smarter than previously thought - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34331909 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34331909 - Jan 2023 (24 comments)
- cjensen 4y agoThis paper starts by assuming that the different neuron density of birds vs non-avian reptiles is due to birds being endothermic. That's... quite an assumption. EVERYTHING about the evolution of birds is about flight. Specifically, it's about keeping weight down. Loss of teeth, for example, is a tradeoff where birds have worse digestion in exchange for losing the weight cost of teeth. Birds frequently get leg injuries because of how small their legs are: again a tradeoff between durability vs weight. Seems to me the first burden of proof for this theory is to show that birds have wildly more compact neurons due to endothermy rather than the usual weight issue. Their own data is not helpful to their point as it shows differences between bird clades suggesting significant evolution on this point since the initial evolution of birds.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- djmips 4y agoI agree - it's interesting to contemplate but the article title should be Therapod dinosaurs _may_ have had primate-like numbers of neurons.
- spiritplumber 4y agoClever girls.
- Haga 4y ago[dead]
- pedro2 4y ago[flagged]
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y agoI remember reading an article, linked from here, a couple of years ago, that stated, that, after just a couple of million years, the only evidence of our civilization, would be marbles. Everything else would be gone. Concrete, cities, steel, cars, roads, farmland, etc. All gone. That infers that the dinosaurs could have had some kind of civilization, and there’s no evidence left, because they didn’t play jacks.
- truculent 4y agoWouldn’t there also be a particularly rich seam of rock with a high concentration of various minerals that we use?
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y agoI would think so. I tried finding that article, and couldn’t, but I did find this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16837120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16837120
- antupis 4y agoIt is called Silurian hypothesis eg https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-astrobiology/article/silurian-hypothesis-would-it-be-possible-to-detect-an-industrial-civilization-in-the-geological-record/77818514AA6907750B8F4339F7C70EC6 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journa...
- notahacker 4y agoI think the marbles in that claim are what the artefacts of civilization get crushed into rather than the only aspect of our civilization that wouldn't blend in with layers of surrounding rock. If the eroded bones or even imprint of a soft body of some creature that waded in a swamp can be solidified into rock with sufficient fidelity to be preserved for many millions of years, the fossilised imprints and unusual mineral concentrations of the dinosaur equivalent of New York City would be hard to miss or dismiss, assuming it was somewhere we were looking.
- checkyoursudo 4y agoIf they had so many neurons, then why did they all go extinct? Can't have been that smart. But seriously, measuring volume to extrapolate density of neurons after a couple hundred million years of intervening evolution seems a bit tenuous, doesn't it? Also, this method wouldn't tell us what brain regions (neuroanatomy) nor their cognitive functions. So how smart they would have been relative to modern therapods seems still quite a large guess.
- fancybouncy 4y agoyou seem to assume that we won't go extinct...
- usui 4y agoOr that was a facetious joke...
- aruggirello 4y agoTherapods didn't all go extinct in fact. Survivors are called birds.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dghughes 4y agoMy favourite dinosaur is Troodon it had a large brain for its body size. It may have been one of the most intelligent dinosaurs. I read samples found showed that Troodons' brains were so big it left imprints on the inner part of their skulls. It's interesting to think how it may have evolved over time if it had the time to do so.
- SuoDuanDao 4y agoI googled Troodon and the first result says it's "a dubious small bird-like Theropod". Is 'dubious' a technical term in this context?
- conscion 4y agoFrom the Wikipedia article [0][1] > In binomial nomenclature, a nomen dubium (Latin for "doubtful name", plural nomina dubia) is a scientific name that is of unknown or doubtful application. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troodon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troodon [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomen_dubium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomen_dubium
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- api 4y agoI’ll leave the Silurian hypothesis here: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/04/are-we-sure-there-wasnt-a-coal-burning-species-55-million-years-ago/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/04/are-we-sure-there-wa... Not only do we exist as a tiny island in the unimaginable vastness of space, but we also exist in a tiny present in an unimaginable vastness of time. Things that far back in time are like things orbiting other stars. Who knows, maybe just a little more time and they would have shot down that rock.
- blakesterz 4y agoCompeting Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. I'm sure it's just standard to have that on most if not all studies now, but I'm trying to imagine what a "competing interest" would be on a study like this. Easy to imagine if it's sugar or fossil fuels, but literal fossils? Is it possible to have competing interesting in paleontology? (I may not even be right about paleontology here)
- thriftwy 4y agoIf you happen to be a reptile you have to disclose that fact.
- f6v 4y agoFor example, a study could be enabled by a cool new product. Like a state of the art commercial computational technology. And one of the authors happens to hold stock in a company selling the product.
- troyvit 4y ago"Oh sh*t. This means turkeys have souls. Guess I need to get out of the livestock industry."
- thimkerbell 4y agoWhat about crows and ravens?
- mkl 4y agoFrom [1], ravens have ~2.171×10^9 neurons, roughly similar to dogs, raccoons, some monkeys, some parrots and birds of prey, an order of magnitude less than chimpanzees, which is a third of humans, which is a third of elephants. Whales aren't in this list, but they'd be more again (bigger body = more neurons needed to keep it functioning). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_neurons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_n...
- bmitc 4y agoWithout referring to numbers, since I don’t remember them off the top of my head, I believe whales, generally speaking, have less neuron density (but usually higher absolute counts of neurons) than we do but actually have higher folding (gyrification) than human brains. Additionally, in whales, the relative size of the portion associated with emotional intelligence is much higher than that in humans.
- fallingfrog 4y agoVery large animals usually have lower neuron densities than smaller ones, as I understand. Whereas birds in particular have to have very light brains so that they can fly. So I'm skeptical that a dinosaur had birdlike neuron densities.