In Mexico, the first region to be hit by the asteroid, life still remains. Buried in the cool ground inside its egg, an "Alamosaurus" baby has survived. And so has an adult "Alamosaurus". All around the world, small handfuls of dinosaurs try to start over. But their species are already considered extinct. In order to survive, any species needs to maintain a critical mass of population. If it falls below that threshold, then there's no way to climb back from certain extinction.
But life on Earth is not completely destroyed. Out of the ruins, nature starts over. A group of animals that have long been limited in success by the dinosaurs now become the new rulers of the Earth: mammals. Eventually, they multiply and diversify. 10,000 species explode across the planet. And one species, humans, branches off from its relatives and comes down from the trees. They walk on two legs, evolve bigger brains, and eventually, they rule the planet. They build cities that touch the sky, vehicles that can leave the planet, and weapons that can destroy it.
In the end, the narrator says that humans would never have existed if a chance collision in space 150 million years ago had not occurred, sending an asteroid hurtling towards Earth and dooming the dinosaurs to extinction.
Charonosaurus
Charonosaurus was a genus of hadrosaur that lived at the very end of the Upper Cretaceous, about 65 million years ago. Its remains were found in China.
The partial skull resembles that of "Parasaurolophus" from North America. This does "not" suggest a Bering land bridge existed during the Cretaceous period, since at that time North America was far away from Eastern Asia. Instead, it is likely that this group of hadrosaurs all had a similar long, backward-projecting hollow crest. It may have been used for trumpeting their calls. In other words, their skull shape was a basal feature.
"Charonosaurus" was a very large lambeosaurine hadrosaur (estimated around 13 m (42.5 ft) long), known from a partial skull found in Heilongjiang Province, northeastern China. Adult and juvenile hadrosaur remains were found in the same area. They give information on the rest of the skeleton; the femur length was up to 1.35 m. (4.5 ft).
"Charonosaurus" was featured in the Discovery Channel television documentary The Last Day of the Dinosaurs, where it was the prey of "Troodon".
Dinosaur brains and intelligence
Dinosaur brains and intelligence are interesting topics. Dinosaurs were once regarded as stupid animals, but it is now realised that some of the smaller carnivores had above average intelligence for reptiles. This idea led to exaggerated portrayals in films like Jurassic Park.
The idea that "Stegosaurus" had a "brain the size of a walnut" (an oft-repeated phrase), was not quite accurate. It had a brain the size of a dog's, but in proportion to its body, the brain was very small. In the 1880s a well-preserved "Stegosaurus" braincase allowed Othniel Charles Marsh to get a cast of the brain cavity, which gave an idea of the brain size. The endocast showed that the brain was indeed small: relative to body size, maybe the smallest among the dinosaurs. The fact that an animal weighing over 4.5 metric tonnes (5 short tons) could have a brain of no more than 80 grams (2.8 oz) led to the idea that dinosaurs were unintelligent, an idea now largely rejected.
Marsh also noted a large canal in the hip region of the spinal cord, which could have accommodated a structure up to 20 times larger than the famously small brain. This may have been used to coordinate the hind region in defence against theropod attack. This function for the "second brain" is not proved by any direct evidence.
Brain size usually increases with body size in animals (is positively correlated). That means large animals usually have larger brains than smaller animals. The relationship is not linear however. Generally, small mammals have relatively larger brains than big ones. Mice have a direct brain/body size ratio similar to humans (1/40), while elephants have comparatively small brain/body size (1/560), though elephants are obviously quite intelligent animals.
The formula for the curve varies, but is usually given as Ew(brain) = 0.12w(body). As this formula is based on data from mammals, it should be applied to other animals with caution. For some of the other vertebrate classes the power of 3/4 rather than 2/3 is sometimes used, and for many groups of invertebrates the formula may give no meaningful results at all.
Intelligence in animals is hard to establish, but the larger the brain is relative to the body, the more brain weight might be available for complex cognitive tasks. Rather than simply measuring raw brain weight, the EQ formula makes for a ranking of animals. The ranking coincides better with the observed complexity of behaviour. Mean EQ for mammals is around 1, with carnivorans, cetaceans and primates above 1, and insectivores and herbivores below. It also puts humans at the top of the list. The relationship between brain-to-body mass ratio and complexity of behaviour is not perfect, because other factors also influence intelligence. These factors include the evolution of the recent cerebral cortex and different degrees of brain folding. This increase the surface of the cortex, which is positively correlated to intelligence in humans.
Traditional comparisons of brain volume to body mass in dinosaurs have estimated brain size as the volume of the endocast. However, the brain of the modern reptile genus "Sphenodon" fills only about half of its endocranial volume. Some paleontologists used this fifty percent estimate in their estimates of dinosaur brain volume. Other workers have observed that details on the endocranial surface indicates that some fossil reptiles had brains that occupied a much larger portion of the endocranium. Larsson notes that the transition from reptiles to birds prevents using a set ratio from being a valid approach to estimating the volume of the endocranium occupied by a dinosaur's brain.
Adding difficulty is the wide range of estimates for live mass. One study estimated that the live masses for many dinosaur genera had a four-fold range. Larsson laments that "[t]he broad ranges of body mass estimates, combined with the ambiguous ratio of endocranial volume occupied by the brain, present a high degree of uncertainty for [creating an] index of brain size". Consequently, he attempted to minimize errors by making a different kind of comparison.
While it is difficult to estimate the absolute volume of the brain, the proportions of its various regions of the brain should be the same in the endocast as it was in the live brain. Larsson's study compared the ratio of the cerebrum, which is clearly marked on the inside of skulls, to the rest of the endocast's volume. According to Larsson, his technique is superior to traditional comparisons of brain volume to estimated live body mass.
Most dinosaurs, and most theropods, had brains no better than present-day reptiles, so far as can be estimated. In a 2001 study of a "Carcharodontosaurus saharicus" endocast, Hans Larsson found that both "C. saharicus" and "Allosaurus" had a ratio of cerebrum to brain volume that was very similar to non-avian reptiles. By contrast, the "Tyrannosaurus" ratio was slightly in the direction of a more bird-like proportion. Since tyrannosaurs are relatively basal coelurosaurs, this is evidence that the advent of the Coelurosauria marks the beginning of a trend in theropod brain enlargement.
"Troodon"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s cerebrum-to-brain-volume ratio was 31.5% to 63% of the way from a nonavian reptile proportion to a truly avian one.
"Archaeopteryx" had a cerebrum-to-brain-volume ratio 78% of the way to modern birds.
The method used for Larsson's comparison was not the EQ, but a ratio of the size of the cerebrum to the whole brain. The cerebrum is chiefly responsible for what might be called 'intelligent behaviour'.