Velociraptors on the prowl (Picture: Universal)
Remember that scene in Jurassic Park where the velociraptors figure out how to open a door?
Or revealed they had learnt to test the electric fences?
Well, it turns out that just like the rest of the film, it is pure Hollywood hype – well, until we do resurrect them. Dinosaurs, it turns out, may not be as smart as we’ve been led to believe.
In fact, they were probably only about as clever as the lizards and reptiles of today. That might seem a reasonable assumption given they themselves are reptiles, but a study last year suggested dinosaurs may have shown intelligence on a similar level to monkeys.
This is because scientists thought they had an exceptionally high number of neurons, or brain cells, in those big heads. This supreme smartness could have led to cultural transmission – the sharing of habits, in the same way eyeball poking in capuchin monkeys spread like wildfire – and even the use of tools.
The dinosaurs easily outsmarted people in Jurassic Park (Picture: Universal)
But sadly it seems T rex didn’t use her tiny arms to crack open nuts or shuck oysters like macaques.
Apparently they were more like ‘smart, giant crocodiles’.
So still pretty terrifying then.
Dinosaurs were fear, but were they smart? (Picture: Getty/Science Photo Libra)
The findings come from a new study led by Dr Kai Caspar, which argues that previous assumptions of brain size and the number of neurons are unreliable. Scientists have generally used the shapes of fossilised skulls and the brain cavities inside them to estimate brain size, alongside mineral infillings of the cavity known as endocasts.
However, writing in the journal The Anatomical Record, the team believes that guessing the number of neurons alone cannot help determine dino intelligence.
Many dinosaurs have large heads, leading scientists to estimate they had a large brain (Picture: Getty/Science Photo Libra)
Fossilised skeletons have been used to guess brain size (Picture: Getty)
Co-author Hady George, a PhD student at the University of Bristol, said: ‘Determining the intelligence of dinosaurs and other extinct animals is best done using many lines of evidence, ranging from gross anatomy to fossil footprints instead of relying on neuron number estimates alone.’
Dr Caspar added: ‘We argue that it’s not good practice to predict intelligence in extinct species when neuron counts reconstructed from endocasts are all we have to go on.’
Co-author Dr Darren Naish, from the University of Southampton, added: ‘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.
‘But our study shows how all the data we have is against this idea. They were more like smart, giant crocodiles, and that’s just as fascinating.’
A film about smart, giant crocodiles would probably go down well, but when it comes to Jurassic Park, the dinosaurs’ intelligence isn’t the only thing they got wrong.
Well to be fair, often it’s more like the evidence has changed since the Steven Spielberg epic hit our screens, such as the fact velociraptors probably didn’t hunt in packs.
They also probably had feathers, and that’s coming from the film’s in-house palaeontology consultant, Jack Horner.
And as for the Dilophosaurus, the famous reptile with the hidden face frills that spat venom? Well, it was probably about three times as big as shown on screen.