Bruce Dorminey Contributor
I cover over-the-horizon technology, aerospace and astronomy.
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“Physiologically, ‘classic’ dinosaurs, like Brontosaurus, Triceratops or Tyrannosaurus rex are most akin to reptiles like snakes, alligators, and lizards,” Bruce Lieberman, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, told me. “In modern ‘reptiles’ there is always a very small brain size ratio relative to body size, [which] is why you can’t really ‘train’ a pet snake to do complex tricks.”
Dinosaurs may have been cunning and very efficient in adapting to their environment, but they also had no reason to evolve into Mesozoic philosophers, Peter Ward, a University of Washington paleontologist and most recently the author of “A New History of Life,” told me.
The skeleton of an adult Tyrannosaurus rex.
(Photo credit: SVEN HOPPE/AFP/Getty Images)
(Photo credit: SVEN HOPPE/AFP/Getty Images)
“The notion that some subset of dinosaurs would have evolved into human-like creatures is absurd,” Lori Marino, an evolutionary neurobiologist and executive director at the Kimmela Center for Animal Advocacy in Kanab, Utah, told me. “We [haven’t] any data to suggest that complex technology has survival value along evolutionary timescales.”
Ward notes that mammals would not have evolved to be the dominant species they are today if the dinosaurs hadn’t been wiped out. So, are we humans really here as a fluke?
Ward sees human evolution as a low probability event, in large part because brains are expensive. “No cell in biology requires more oxygen than a nerve cell which has to fire a chemical charge across a long thin [brain] cell,” said Ward.
Ward says that when dinosaurs first evolved during the Mesozoic — the era spanning some 250 to 65 million years ago — Earth’s atmospheric oxygen levels were much too low for large brains to have developed. “To have enough energy for intelligence is going to require oxygen,” said Ward. “For life on land, it’s got to be high oxygen and getting high oxygen is very difficult to do.”
But to evolve, intelligence is thought to also require some sort of environmental stressor.
For humans, that arguably happened some 20 million years ago, as a result of fluctuations in East Africa’s climate due to the formation of the East African Rift System. Long-held evolutionary theory has been that regional climate upheaval — due to a 6,000-mile long, deep crack in Earth’s crust which extends from present-day Mozambique to Lebanon — may have spurred the need for emerging primates to develop an intellect capable of predictive analysis in order to manage chronic food shortages.
This arguably would confirm ‘necessity’ as the most powerful driver for the evolution of intelligence. But if we humans were wiped out, what species would take our place as the next smart phone-wielding, high-tech civilization?
“If no other species has the need to evolve a technological intelligence then it will not happen,” said Marino. “Only if there is selective pressure to develop a complex technological intelligence, will it happen again.”
Even so, ironically, Ward says if we were out of the picture, it’s arguable that that some species of crows or parrots, themselves vestigial dinosaurs, might evolve to take our place. Ward is continually impressed by the resourcefulness of the African Grey Parrot, which he notes also has the ability to manipulate objects between its beaks and claws.
“African Grey Parrots increasingly seem to have the analog of human intelligence,” said Ward. “They can add and subtract and even speak in complete sentences.”
Parrots evolved intelligence for the same reason we did; they were dealing with forested areas that were being changed through rapid climate change, Ward says. “Parrots had to be able to visualize where food would be in two weeks and that required the ability to predict the future,” he said.
As for giant octopuses, which are sometimes touted for their relatively large brains?
“They have this enormous brain and they don’t have enough oxygen to fuel it,” said Ward. “Unless they change their whole blood system — which would be too radical an evolutionary change, an octopus can’t get enough oxygen to their inordinately large brain.”
As for sea-bound mammals such as dolphins and whales?
Ward doesn’t ever see a tech civilization first developing in a water medium. “For really advanced technology, you need to smelt [metals] and you can’t smelt underwater,” he said. But as Marino points out, technology is also really just a reflection of a given species’ psychology.
“Our use of technology is very consistent with our nature as great apes,” said Marino. “So, if a very different kind of species were to develop the capacity to build spaceships, they would use their technology in ways that would reflect who they are.”