I was on a day trip, exploring Beacon, NY, when I noticed this funny sign in the front window of the Beacon Library. It reads: “Dinosaurs Didn’t Read and now They’re Extinct. Coincidence?” A pretty funny idea from the local librarian to use some humor to get people inside their doors.
The idea of a dinosaur reading a book sent me to a favorite AI image app, to generate some images to see what dinosaurs reading might look like. I wonder what they’re reading?
The concept makes me wonder – how smart were dinosaurs? And how would anyone ever know whether they were smart or not? A little research suggests that various palaeontologists, behavioral scientists and neurologists have examined the brain size and structure of dinosaurs and have somehow concluded they had intelligence similar to reptiles but that they were not as intelligent as monkeys. Here’s a specific article from 2023 that suggests in the right conditions, dinosaurs could have evolved to where they had the capacity for tool use and planning for the future … hmm, I can’t see a dinosaur using a bit-off tree trunk as a hammer, but then again, what do I know?
