Dinosaur Brains
I Know Dino: The Big Dinosaur Podcast
I KNOW DINO, LLC
4.7 • 653 Ratings
🗓️ 4 September 2025
⏱️ 81 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The discovery of a new Psittacosaurus species from a braincase, how spinosaur brains adapted for eating fish, revisiting T. rex intelligence, and many more dinosaur brain updates
For links to every news story, all of the details we shared about Tatankacephalus, and our fun fact check out https://iknowdino.com/Tatankacephalus-Episode-547/
Join us at www.patreon.com/iknowdino for dinosaur requests, bonus content, ad-free episodes, and more.
Dinosaur of the day Tatankacephalus, the "bison-headed" armored dinosaur.
In dinosaur news this week:
- A skull, including a braincase, is enough to tell us there’s a new Psittacosaurus species, Psittacosaurus houi
- Studying dinosaur brains is an evolving field
- Brain size varied in dinosaurs
- Ceratopsians became less intelligent and had worse hearing and a worse sense of smell as they evolved to larger sizes
- Ornithopods, and especially hadrosaurs, had bigger brains than we thought
- Thescelosaurus had a powerful sense of smell, a sensitive vestibular system, but terrible hearing—all which may mean it was a burrower
- A study of spinosaur brains and skulls helps show how they adapted to eat fish
- Living birds have high EQs which they evolved from non-avian dinosaurs (although we don't really use EQs much anymore)
- Shuvuuia may not have had specialized hearing
- The enantiornithe Navaornis hestiae tells us a lot about bird brains
- Unique brain shape in birds may be why birds survived non-avian dinosaurs after the mass extinction event
- Parrots and humans may use similar brain mechanisms to produce complex sounds
- Bird brains (and our brains) are wired for taking turns when communicating
- T. rex had the intelligence of a baboon paper
- Rebuttal to T. rex baboon intelligence paper
This episode is brought to you by our patrons. Their generous contributions make our podcast possible! You can now save 10% by paying annually. Go to Patreon.com/iknowdino to sign up and help us keep creating I Know Dino every week.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This episode is brought to you by K-12-powered schools, tuition-free online accredited public schools for kindergarten through 12th grade. |
| 0:09.8 | Go to k-12.com slash IKD to find a tuition-free K-12-powered school near you and enroll now. |
| 0:18.0 | Your first great love story is free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at |
| 0:22.3 | audible.co. |
| 0:23.2 | com. |
| 0:23.3 | UK slash Wondery. |
| 0:25.3 | That's audible. |
| 0:25.9 | dot code. |
| 0:26.6 | UK slash Wondery. |
| 0:31.7 | Hello and welcome to I Know Dino. |
| 0:38.1 | Keep up with the latest dinosaur discoveries and science with us. |
| 0:41.0 | I'm Garrett. |
| 0:41.6 | And I'm Sabrina. |
| 0:42.5 | And today in our 547th episode, we're talking all about dinosaur brains. |
| 0:48.1 | Yes, and that includes a new dinosaur based on a skull. |
| 0:51.6 | So I'm counting that as dinosaur brains. |
| 0:53.2 | Mm-hmm. |
| 0:54.1 | That's good. I like a dinosaur that's based on a skull rather than a toe bone or a tooth or something. |
| 1:00.2 | Yes. We also have a review of a dinosaur dig in Colorado and I want to say thank you to our Dino-It-all. |
| 1:06.3 | Aaron for sharing that one with us. And we have Dinosaur of the Day, Tatanka Cephalus, the bison-headed armored dinosaur, |
| 1:14.6 | as well as a fun fact, which is that Tyrannosaurus Rex had similar inner ears to humans, |
| 1:20.9 | and that is related to brains. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from I KNOW DINO, LLC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of I KNOW DINO, LLC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

