How smart was T. rex?

How brainy was Tyrannosaurus rex? It depends on who you ask.

Last year, the iconic Cretaceous dinosaur received the glow-up of a lifetime when Suzana Herculano-Houzel, a neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, calculated that the predator had 3.3 billion neurons in one part of the forebrain alone. The discovery put T. rex’s forebrain on par with modern baboons’.

The finding raised eyebrows — and doubts. Any suggestion that these dinosaurs were as smart as primates “seems like a large leap,” says Cristián­ Gutiérrez-Ibáñez, a comparative neuroscientist at the U­niversity of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. “Having the same number of neurons as a primate does not make you a

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