Hint: T Rex became smart before he became big...
From Scientific American a really interesting article on the evolution of T Rex. Great read if you like dinosaurs (and who doesn't?).
This is a life reconstruction of the new tyrannosaur Timurlengia euotica in its environment 90 million years ago. It is accompanied by two flying reptiles (Azhdarcho longicollis). The fossilized remains of a new horse-sized dinosaur, Timurlengia euotica, reveal how Tyrannosaurus rex and its close relatives became top predators, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Credit: Original painting by Todd Marshall.
Meet Timurlengia euotica, a horse-sized tyrannosaur that lived about 90 million years ago when Uzbekistan was a sweltering maze of forests and rivers bordering a vast inland sea.
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But there’s also another part of Timurlengia’s skeleton that we were able to study: the braincase, the fused bones at the back of the skull that surround the brain, ear, and sinuses. We put it into a CT scanner, which allowed us to digitally peer inside and see what the brain and sensory organs looked like.
This gave us quite a surprise: Timurlengia had the same type of brain and ear as the giant tyrannosaurs such as T. rex. It was very smart, and had an ear attuned to hearing low frequency sounds. Previously, these features were thought to be unique to the big tyrannosaurs, part of that toolkit of predatory superpowers that evolved as they turned into giants.
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