Elephants and whales have the largest brains, which is directly related to their body size. Don't you find the dinosaur brain size paradoxically small?

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  1. And where does the data on the paradoxically small size of the brain come from? As far as I know, only one dinosaur brain fragment was found along with a piece of skull (in England), which just miraculously survived in the swamp.�figshare.com

    We have already investigated, and there are conclusions that the brain is similar in structure to the brains of birds and crocodiles. But there is something else in the publication: this is the conclusion that the brain fits snugly to the cranium simply because it is “suckered” in the swamp. There is a hypothesis that the dinosaur brain was smaller than the size of the skull (like the yolk in an egg). The fossils found do not refute this hypothesis. Although, if it turns out to be false, then the brains of dinosaurs were not exactly tiny.�

    Even if dinosaurs did have small brains, it doesn't seem parodox to me, because the size of the brain isn't directly related to the size of the body.

  2. The paths of dinosaurs and the ancestors of modern mammals diverged a long time ago. Back when there were no dinosaurs as such. Rather, it is more appropriate to compare dinosaur brain/body proportions with avian ones (with direct descendants of one of the dinosaur groups). Questions may remain in this case, but the difference is likely to be less dramatic.

    The harmfulness of uncritical comparison of distant biological taxa is shown by the “theoretical” conclusions made in the past about the intelligence of birds (in particular, crows). They say that the brain is small, and there are few or undeveloped structures there, which means that the crow is stupid. But direct experiments later showed that the crow is smarter than most mammals and neither the small brain nor the lack of” mandatory ” structures in it does not interfere with it at all.�

    UPD. I was wrong about the comparison with birds. He's right about the non – applicability of empirical laws for mammals to dinosaurs. Compared to today's reptiles, large dinosaurs don't have any unusually small brains. Everything is within the “norm”.

    Measurement of brain mass … It was shown that mammals and birds of equal weight have approximately the same brain mass, which significantly exceeds the brain mass of fish and reptiles of equal weight[14]. The idea that dinosaurs had smaller brains compared to modern reptiles is not supported by biometric data. In the body mass range that is typical for modern reptiles, the brain and body mass ranges for reptiles and dinosaurs coincide. At large body masses, which are typical for large dinosaurs, the brain mass increases in a power-law relationship with the usual vertebrate exponent of 0.65—0.70.

    Source� (part of the quote text is highlighted by me)

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