Episode 547: Dinosaur Brains. The discovery of a new Psittacosaurus species from a braincase, how spinosaur brains adapted for eating fish, revisiting T. rex intelligence, and many more dinosaur brain updates

News:

• A skull, including a braincase, is enough to tell us there’s a new Psittacosaurus species, Psittacosaurus houi source
• Studying dinosaur brains is an evolving field source
• Brain size varied in dinosaurs source
• Ceratopsians became less intelligent and had worse hearing and a worse sense of smell as they evolved to larger sizes source
• Ornithopods, and especially hadrosaurs, had bigger brains than we thought source
• Thescelosaurus had a powerful sense of smell, a sensitive vestibular system, but terrible hearing—all which may mean it was a burrower source
• A study of spinosaur brains and skulls helps show how they adapted to eat fish source
• Living birds have high EQs which they evolved from non-avian dinosaurs (although we don’t really use EQs much anymore) source
• Shuvuuia may not have had specialized hearing source
• The enantiornithe Navaornis hestiae tells us a lot about bird brains source
• Unique brain shape in birds may be why birds survived non-avian dinosaurs after the mass extinction event source
• Parrots and humans may use similar brain mechanisms to produce complex sounds source
• Bird brains (and our brains) are wired for taking turns when communicating source
• T. rex had the intelligence of a baboon paper source
• Rebuttal to T. rex baboon intelligence paper source

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The dinosaur of the day: Tatankacephalus

• Not to be confused with Tatankaceratops, the “bison horn face” ceratopsian (which may also not be a valid dinosaur, some scientists suspect it’s a juvenile Triceratops)
• Nodosaurid that lived in the Early Cretaceous in what is now Montana, U.S. (Cloverly Formation)
• Considered to be a basal nodosaurid
• As a nodosaurid, walked on four legs, covered in armor, no tail club
• Estimated to be 23 ft (7 m) long
• Holotype is a partial skull (no lower jaws) of an adult
• Skull was 90% complete
• Skull was not compressed or distorted
• Had differences in the skull that made it unique, and not like the other ankylosaur from the Cloverly Formation, Sauropelta (such as having a dome on the front of the skull)
• Had a thick skull
• Had two horns on the side of the skull, two thick domes at the back of the skull, and smaller thick areas around the snout
• Had a domed head and round eye sockets
• Had a large bone ridge across the back of its head
• Had heavy ornamentation and horn-like plates covering it
• Also found some ribs, two osteoderms, and a tooth
• Only one osteoderm intact, and it is hollow and conical (about 5.4 in or 13.7 cm long and 4.5 in or 11.5 cm wide)
• Type species is Tatankacephalus cooneyorum
• Described in 2009 by William Parsons and Kristen Parsons, a husband and wife team
• Genus name comes from the Lakota word for bison (tatanka) and the Greek word for head
• Genus name refers to its rounded head
• Horns on the back of the skull kind of look like horns on a buffalo skull
• Genus name means “bison head”
• Species name in honor of the family of John Patrick Cooney
• Genus name also alludes to the city of Buffalo, because Bill and Kris Parsons both worked as researchers at the Buffalo Museum of Science
• Parsons is also a paleoartist / scientific illustrator
• Fossils found in 1997 on the surface of a hillside
• The whole Parsons family still hunt for fossils
• Found an article from 2023 talking about how their twins dug out a fossilized egg in Montana that had an embryo in it, possibly a pterosaur
• Said their kids have been going on digs every summer since they were born, and they went on their first dig when they were four months old (had their kids the same year they described Tatankacephalus)
• Other dinosaurs that lived around the same time and place include the ceratopsian Aquilops, sauropods such as Sauroposeidon, and theropods such as Acrocanthosaurus
• Other animals that lived around the same time and place include mammals, crocodyliforms, turtles, amphibians, and fish

Fun Fact:

Tyrannosaurus rex had similar inner ears to humans

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