Alternative Timeline Dinosaurs

December 16, 2019 8:54 AM

Alternative Timeline Dinosaurs, the View From 2019: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3: The Dinosauroid and its Chums
posted by brundlefly (8 comments total)

Fun, thank you for posting!
posted by agregoli at 8:59 AM on December 16, 2019

Though only the one volume on dinosaurs mentioned in Part 1 is pertinent to this discussion, Dougal Dixon's After Trilogy as a whole (After Man, The New Dinosaurs, and Man After Man) were such seminal texts for my imagination when I was a kid. Bought with my own money when I was about 11, I think I read & treasured Dixon's New Dinosaurs until it was falling apart.
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:35 AM on December 16, 2019 [4 favorites]

Same here, Ashwagandha.
posted by brundlefly at 10:41 AM on December 16, 2019

Dougal Dixon's books are so awesome. Cool post, thanks.
posted by Liquidwolf at 11:50 AM on December 16, 2019

One thing I notice is that, although dinosauroids have over time gotten more dinosaur-y in terms of body plans, they still tend to feature very bulbous heads in order to hold human-sized brains. But it seems to me that the idea that human-level intelligence would require human neuroanatomy is just as presumptuous as the (thankfully falling into disfavor) idea that human-level intelligence would require a human body plan. If dinosauroids had avian neuron densities (so 2x to 3x that of humans), they could have both human-level neuron counts and more typical dinosaur/bird head proportions. That is, if you scaled up a raven to 70kg you'd have an animal with half the brain size of a human but more total neurons, no weird domed head required.
posted by Pyry at 1:00 PM on December 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

That is, if you scaled up a raven to 70kg you'd have an animal with half the brain size of a human but more total neurons, no weird domed head required.

I wonder if in an alternate universe human primates densified their neurons and were born more developed rather than being born "early" to support larger cranial capacity.
posted by Dr. Twist at 3:41 PM on December 16, 2019

I love this. Thanks for sharing!
posted by mixedmetaphors at 5:50 PM on December 16, 2019

Dougal Dixon is the besssst!
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 12:18 PM on December 17, 2019