Could we ever know how dinosaurs thought or behaved?

Comments · 51

• CA

  @casskc65 · 5 years ago

  I've never thought of dinosaurs being dumb I always thought of them as being calculated and strategically

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• 03

  @0351nick-ch8ee · 4 years ago

  "they did travel in herds"....

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• XA

  @xanetas · 5 years ago

  Amazing talk. A real pleasure listen to this man.

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• RC

  @rcruz4510 · 5 years ago

  Also - those hadrosaur bone crests: could they really be used as sounding devices given that dinosaurs have no secondary palates? How do you make a crest like reverberate unless you can close off the nasal passage? Not saying they didn't have soft tissue muscles that could accomplish that - but something would have had to allow for the air to be forced into the crest.

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• WA

  @wafikiri_ · 5 years ago

  A fascinating talk. Pity about the missing part: Could we ever know how dinosaurs thought?  To my understanding, every extinct animal thought the same way that extant animals of today do: First they sensed and perceived their environment, in what features of the latter were phylogenially interesting to them. Availability or lack of resources, presence or absence of dangers, relatives, prospective mates, competitors, such things are present in the environment and important to individuals in various degrees across species. The purpose of cognition universally is to understand the environment (body included), and then configure the body and guide behaviour accordingly in a way tendant to preserve, reduce, change, or avoid the current state of the environment as might be convenient. The above interest, conveniency, sensing, perception, understanding, and behaviour are phylogenially established, through natural selection, to increase the species' chances of survival over those provided by sheer luck.

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• BO

  @borislavnikolov6240 · 5 years ago

  Brilliant!

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• RC

  @rcruz4510 · 5 years ago (edited)

  Amazing! I like how he explained that dinosaurs would have failed in our world given the climatic differences between the Mesozoic and now.

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• YA

  @yabton5110 · 5 years ago

  Feel like Norman could have used some more up-to-date GS Paul illustrations.

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• AL

  @Aluminata · 5 years ago

  I know what the mammals thought; "HOLY CRAP!!!"

• BE

  @bernardedwards8461 · 4 years ago

  Why is it that the Kaga impact in Russia 4 million years DEFORE Chixculub and about 3/4 as powerful, with a crater 75 miles across, had none of the aspects of Chix: no mass dino deaths, no iridium, no forest fires or nuclear winter. The Manicouagan impact in Ontario preceded Chix by 150 million years, but was still well within the age of dinosaurs. Left a 62 mile wide crater, but again no widespread dino massacre, no iridium, forest fires or nuclear winter. Then we have the Acraman Crater in S. Australia. This was 8 millin years AFTER Chix, left a 56 milewide crater, but no extinctions, iridium, forest fires or nuclear winter! It seems to me that the reduced megatonnage of these explosions is not enough to explain their negligible effect on the environment.

• AL

  @Aluminata · 4 years ago

  "Yeah" being the ancient Egyptian measurement corresponding to approximately 1.5 meters...

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• FR

  @frankbevan413 · 4 years ago

  you can guess on how they behave  = there is no way you can say you know how they think or thought

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