Jean Le Loeuff (Translator, Alison Duncan), Johns Hopkins University Press
As a child, I remember sitting and drawing dinosaurs as I tried to imagine how they became extinct. Long before I knew about the Chicxulub asteroid impact 66 million years ago, my best theory at 7 years old was that giant waves broke onto their long necks, dispatching dinosauria in its entirety.
Reading the delightful and informative , I was reminded of the biggest limitation of my sketches (and theories): it is a big mistake to apply one paradigm to the behaviour and cognition of these incredibly diverse animals. Its author should know: palaeontologist Jean Le Loeuff is the curator of the Museum of Dinosaurs in Esperaza, France.
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Take intelligence. Le Loeuff gives it a red-hot crack and doesn鈥檛 hide behind scientific caution. So, were velociraptors really as clever as they are portrayed in the Jurassic Park movies? The answer, one most cinema-goers want to know in case they end up hunted by a dinosaur, is no and鈥� yes.
鈥淪teven Spielberg and Michael Crichton鈥檚 images of highly intelligent raptors hunting in packs and of tyrannosaurs catching a jeep at full speed鈥� need to be toned down a little in light of the latest studies,鈥� Le Loeuff writes.
They may not have been able to open doors or use tools, but in other respects, dinosaurs were sharp. For example, Le Loeuff cites a showing that Tyrannosaurus rex probably had a better sense of smell than most birds and 鈥渃lose to what a dog has鈥�. This debunks one of the most memorable movie factoids 鈥� stand still and a T. rex won鈥檛 know you鈥檙e there. 鈥�Jurassic Park鈥榮 characters didn鈥檛 stand a chance,鈥� he writes.
What about the insulting claim that a stegosaurus had a brain the size of a walnut? Wrong again, says Le Loeuff. New has found their brains were probably closer to the size of two walnuts 鈥渙r a beautiful apricot, if you prefer鈥�.
Above all, though, Le Loeuff captures the range of dinosaur behaviour across hundreds of known species and 170 million years 鈥� whether they played, were good parents, what their sex lives were like (at best, very tricky and likely to result in injuries) and whether they were lone wolves or very social animals.
What is almost certain is that they really were far from unintelligent. Some were just smarter than others.
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