The T. rex may have been smarter than previously thought
washingtonpost.com
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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.
They did not seem to have evolved to use tools either, or some kind of burial process (though we do not probably know), or art-like creations (again, we probably do not know).
What I meant with my comment is that we talk a lot about evolution and I find that dinosaurs spanning some 150 M years (vs 2 M for humans) are not used enough in presentations of evolution.
It would probably be great to say: look, 150 M years of evolution changed this and that (say, minor changes) because of this and that (environment pressure, ...) as opposed to [something, humans for instance, or giraffes, or other examples usually used in such discussions] that only took X k/M years to go from A to B. I would find it a good message to convey, as everyone knows about dinosaurs but not that much about their time span.
That's mainly because we don't really know what they looked like apart from their general bone structure. Imagine we tried to reconstruct what modern mammals looked like from their bones so gave all of them short brownish fur.
Being able to survive that long is literally the best case in known history. It’s far longer than our current form has survived and if you believe a mass extinction is occurring, perhaps humans aren’t all that good at surviving long-term at all. Yet sharks, squid, and crocodiles might be just fine for this extinction as well.
Favouring intelligence like ours is extremely anthropocentric. It seems great to have MacBooks and rockets but the evidence for technology and the extent of our abilities actually serving us well has yet to be proven.
It seems likely to me that dinosaurs shared common body plans because they worked really well. There was likely little pressure to change, and the body plans they had were consistently rewarded by the conditions on earth and competition between species. They survived crazy geological events over so many millions of years.
It seems worth noting too that a lot of what we think they looked like is guess-work. It could turn out that they were actually far more diverse than we realize. And for that matter, although they did seem to follow common body plans, some species appeared to be quite different and diversified.
Thanks for your comments.
I wonder if they would have developed nuclear weapons and dropped them on their fellow dinosaurs. Terrifying!
People don’t give animals enough credit. Cows are considered stupid animals but spend some time with them and you’ll find they have personalities, moods, preferences, friendships (certain cows like to be near each other), foes (certain cows do not like to be near each other), if they expect to be fed at a certain time of day they get fidgety and vocal if your late, etc.
Crows can use tools, solve problems, and have altruistic behaviors.
Every once in a while there's a good role, but you're usually better off looking at the other comedians surrounding them in the role.
Land of the Lost was a similar assault, saw it for the first time a few weeks ago when searching for a comedy. A lot of bad jokes but enough humorous concepts to not make you want to turn it off. Never a movie I'd recommend or want to watch again
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's demise by asteroid impact.