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Showing posts with the label Tyrannosaurus

WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO BE A DINOSAUR?

  Next month,   Scientific American  will feature dinosaurs. Early in my youth, I made dinosaur figures using plaster of paris.   I then wanted to be a paleontologist.  I now know that this occupation forces you to spend ungodly time in horrible places with terrible weather. But about that above  Scientific American  article : Begins with the Tyrannosaurus Rex.  Note some fluffiness, as explained in the end of this posting. Brain weighed less than a pound.   We have a 3-pound brain, while an elephant has an 11-pound brain.   Dinosaurs and elephants were similar in size: T-Rex had a length of 40 feet and height of 20 feet, but elephants weighed more, 12,000 lb vs 9,000 pounds. A human brain is 2% of our body weight.   Elephant = 0.1% and dinosaur = 0.01%. T-Rex had 3 billion neurons, while humans have 100 billion and a Nile crocodile around 0.8 million.  An emu has roughly 1.3 billion neurons.  Thus,  T-Rex was not capable of advanced planning or coordinated social hunting.  But it is s