Did Large Dinosaurs Have Two Brains?
Excerpt from “Why Knot?” Buy the book at Amazon
Yesterday, I had to stop for a hook-and-ladder truck backing into a fire-station. A driver up front, working in coordination with another driver at the back, maneuvered it into a tight space. The fire truck reminded me of a huge dinosaur like a brontosaurus or tyrannosaurus rex. It dawned on me that maybe such dinosaurs were more complex and intelligent than is generally presumed. Wouldn’t it make sense for such a beast to have two brains, like a fire truck?
As I recall from a recent museum visit, tyrannosaurus rex had a large bone structure between the legs that didn’t seem to have a purpose, except maybe extra weight for balance. Perhaps that bone structure protected a second brain. Such a beast might have had a small brain up by the eyes, for visual pre-processing, and a second, larger one located near the middle of the body, and well-protected by bone and muscle.
This speculation reminds me of the evolution of PC design, from single processor computers to multi-processor machines, where separate chips pre-process graphics and do other functions to speed overall performance.
Why should we care how dinosaurs thought? If some dinosaurs had greater brain power than generally presumed, that would alter our notions of evolution-related progress. And if a two-brained species could thrive for millions or tens of millions of years, that would expand the range of what we consider possible, not just on Earth, but also elsewhere in the universe.
