Dinosaur Brains Flight-Ready Long Before They Took To the Air

An anonymous reader writes "Dinosaurs evolved the brain power for flight long before they took to the air, new evidence presented in the journal Nature suggests. Contrary to the cliche, a 'bird brain' describes a relatively enlarged brain with the capacity required for flight. However, based on high-resolution X-ray computed tomographic (CT) scans, researchers found that at least a few non-avian dinosaurs had brains as large or larger than Archaeopteryx, one of the earliest known birds, indicating that some dinosaurs already suspected of flight capability would have had the neurological tools to do so."

It's probably brain to body size.

[anss123]

It's probably brain to body size.

The Neanderthals had bigger brains than us (and so does elephants), but our brains are larger compared to our bodies.

Re:The Archaeopteryx is not a bird...

[Sique]

But the Archaeopteryx is a theropod (actually, it is a paravus, which makes it a maniraptor, which in turn are theropods). Thus your argument does not hold.

And yes, the Archaeopteryx is not a bird, but an extremely close relative to the first bird. The paraves include the aviales, which are "the birds".