“Ancient animals were not at all different in their developed intelligence”: 5 facts about dinosaurs from paleontologist Dmitry Sobolev

We don't know much about dinosaurs, and many myths surround these animals. Paleontologist Dmitry Sobolev said whether it is worth believing that all dinosaurs became extinct immediately after the fall of a giant meteorite and whether they really had no relatives left on Earth. You can listen to a conversation with him on our podcast “Sprayer of Science.” And this is its text version.

1. Dinosaurs are relatives of birds

The word "dinosaur" comes from the merger of the ancient Greek: deinos - "huge", "terrible", and sauros - lizard. That is, a dinosaur is a huge and terrible lizard. But calling them lizards is still not entirely correct, because they belong to the group of sauropsids, that is, reptiles.

And the largest group of reptiles that lives on the planet now are birds. This is not a joke or a mistake. There is such a classification system - cladistics. It sorts groups of organisms according to the inheritance of common characteristics. These identical traits are passed on to descendants from a common ancestor. And modern cladistic classification systems include birds in the group Reptilia. It turns out that birds have a close evolutionary relationship with crocodiles - famous reptiles. And with dinosaurs.

Many dinosaurs have the root “ornis” in their names, which means “bird”. An example is Anchiornis. This ancient animal not only bore a bird's name, but also looked like a typical feathered creature. It was black, its back had a blue tint, and there were red feathers on its cheeks. Perhaps he had a white crest on his head, but this is not certain.

The dinosaur Anchiornis resembled a magpie, only very large - just over 40 centimeters. You can’t tell right away what kind of creature it is—whether it’s a lizard or a bird. It was a very thin bipedal animal with a long tail, small forelimbs, and a light skull. But there were larger reptiles.

2. Dinosaurs are well-adapted, but not at all smart creatures

Here's an interesting structural feature of all dinosaurs: they had many air sacs in their bodies. Because of this, the lizard could not be drowned in water. Such features of the body structure were found not only in small creatures, but also in diplodocus and predatory tyrannosaurs. If there were no air sacs, an adult T. rex would weigh not 8 tons, but 12–15. In this case, he would not have been able to walk and would unlikely have survived.

So the lizards have adapted well to the world around them.

But the ancient animals were not at all distinguished by their developed intelligence. They didn’t need intelligence, because all ecosystems were structured very simply. The climatic conditions were stable, there was enough food, there was nothing to think about. And big brains mean, first of all, a serious expenditure of energy. For the ancients - completely ineffective.

Birds began to get smarter much later - already in the Cenozoic era, when about 20 million years passed after the extinction of dinosaurs.

3. Pterosaurs are a separate branch of ancient creatures that learned to fly

You can often hear that pterosaurs are descendants of dinosaurs that grew wings. But it is not so. Dinosaurs and pterosaurs did share a common ancestor. But then their development took different paths.

In general, evolution is a very interesting thing. Few people know that feathers did not arise for flying, legs - not for walking, and eyes - not for seeing.

Feathers appeared in the common ancestors of land and flying dinosaurs. About 245 million years ago they were all literally alike. But then the ancestors of dinosaurs remained on earth. They began to learn to walk on two legs and develop the caudofemoral muscle. Their metabolism also adapted to life on earth.

Well, the ancestors of pterosaurs climbed into the trees and began to learn to live there. Then they mastered gliding flight using membranes between their limbs. And even later, evolution helped them grow long little fingers and attach expanded parts of the membranes to them. And about 238–245 million years ago, flying pterosaurs formed.

4. Tyrannosaurs - the top predators of their time

T-Rex is a popular horror movie character. In the movies, he is a ruthless killer - the most terrible of all predators in that world. It is almost impossible to escape from it. Let's figure out if this is so.

Why did tyrannosaurs gain an evolutionary advantage?

This reptile is a North American relative of Tarbosaurus, which lived in Russia and Mongolia, and Zhujingtiran from southeastern China. All these dinosaurs were practically the same, but it was the Tyrannosaurus rex that became widely known - a descendant of animals that reached North America through the Bering Strait. There the lizard turned into a giant predator, because he had practically no competitors comparable in strength to him.

In the middle of the Cretaceous period, the Cenomanian-Turonian extinction occurred. At this time, all large predators disappeared. One might say that the tyrannosaurus was simply lucky: no one else claimed its ecological niche.

While the little tyrannosaurus was growing up, it ate small animals. At this time, his giant parents ate those who were larger. It turned out that the only predatory species fed on all the living creatures that lived nearby.

On the one hand, this is good for a tyrannosaurus. But on the other hand, an ecosystem in which one dinosaur occupies 70% of ecological niches turns out to be not the most sustainable. Perhaps this was one of the reasons for the extinction of dinosaurs after the fall of a giant asteroid.

How was it possible to defeat a tyrannosaurus or at least not die upon meeting

Tyrannosaurs also had enemies. For example, another similar animal could eat a younger and weaker fellow tribesman. Quetzalcoatl was capable of pecking at an opponent. It happened that Deinosuchus - an ancient alligator - grabbed a dinosaur that had lost its vigilance by the muzzle and dragged it into the water. So tyrannosaurs could not be called invulnerable.

Man, of course, is weaker than all these ancient animals. But in a parallel reality, where you can meet a dinosaur, he would have a chance to survive. For example, just leave on your own or leave by car. The method of rescue should be chosen depending on the age and weight of the animal.

That is, a person is not the best prey, and an animal would hardly be interested in him. But if this happened, an adult tyrannosaurus could easily be walked away through the forest. He would hardly have gone there.

But in open space, an adult predator could reach speeds of up to 30 km/h. Moreover, his limbs were not adapted for running, so he simply walked widely and quickly. Young tyrannosaurs could accelerate to 40–45 km/h. Moreover, unlike adults, they were able to move like this for quite a long time.

Therefore, when meeting a young dinosaur, you need to jump into the car and step on the gas. But you don't have to move away. You can turn the car around and shoot down the beast. Its weight did not exceed 300 kilograms, and the mass of the car was about two tons, so the law of conservation of momentum would be on your side.

5. The extinction of dinosaurs was not instantaneous, but quite fast

It seems to many that the catastrophe that occurred 66 million years ago instantly destroyed most of the fauna. But it is not so.

What killed the dinosaurs

Ancient animals can be blamed for their extinction on a huge asteroid, about 10–15 kilometers across. The explosion upon collision with the surface of the planet was very powerful. It burned forests to the ground, caused numerous tsunamis, and raised millions of tons of soot and dust into the air. The blast wave circled the globe several times. It can be considered a miracle that some animals still managed to survive in such conditions.

The active phase of dinosaur extinction lasted not just a few days, but several thousand years. Although from a geological point of view this is truly an instant.

Why Ancient Reptiles Couldn't Escape

Let's look at the example of tyrannosaurs. These were large animals and they needed a lot of food to live. They lived in a limited area - approximately from California to Canada. Most likely, there were about 20,000 of them there. We can assume that half of the animals died from the tsunami, that is, about 10,000 animals remained.

At first, those who survived the fires had no shortage of food. There were many dead animals around. Tyrannosaurs did not refuse carrion, so in the first months they could live very well. But then problems began. During the fires, herbivores almost lost their food supply, and their numbers became ever smaller. The number of predators also had to be reduced, and the result could be a completely viable balance.

But by this time there were only about a thousand tyrannosaurs left. So little that, apparently, genetic degeneration has begun. Closely related ties became the norm, then harmful mutations began to accumulate, the animals became smaller and weaker. At the same time, the tyrannosaurus had to somehow survive to 12–15 years in order to become capable of reproduction. But it wasn't easy. And there were no other predators left at all, so the ecological niche of tyrannosaurs quickly became empty.

But in this horror that reigned on the planet 66 million years ago, birds - the descendants of pterosaurs - managed to survive. They survived all the cataclysms, of which there were many on our planet, and survived to this day.