Was Tyrannosarus a forerunner to Don Juan?

Uzbekistan has uncovered fossils of a forerunner to Tyrannosaurus Rex.  The two weathermen pondered the find.

Weatherman 1 : There’s a new dinosaur called Timurlengia. It would have been like a Tyrannosaurus, but smaller –about the size of a horse. They found fossilised bones in Uzbekistan that surround the brain and that tells them how it thought and how it sensed the world.

WM2 : How can a bone reveal how an animal thinks? It sounds like an exaggerated claim to me.

WM1 : It’s maybe to do with the dimensions. Its brain and ear were as big as Tyrannosaurus Rex.

WM2 : My head is about the same size as my wife’s – but I haven’t a clue what she’s thinking most of the time.

WM1 : CT scans show it would have had a sophisticated brain, good eyes and good hearing – and sharp teeth. It had an elongated inner ear which picked up low frequency sounds.

WM2 : I suppose knowing the footfall of your duck-billed dinner is more useful than listening to birds tweeting. “aha, I hear a thumping and some teeth gnashing, might be my breakfast” it thought.

WM1 : It’s noisy eating vegetables. Crispy lettuce is one of the loudest foods around to eat – and apples. The plant eating sauropod dinosaurs weren’t bright enough to chew their food slowly and quietly. They probably ate with their mouths open whilst stuffing more in; it made them easy targets.

WM2 : Sauropods were big though. I know horses aren’t small but even so, killing something the size of a double decker bus – well you’d need more than a big brain.

 WM1 : Yes, but Timurlengia grew. It waited until the early carnivores died off, developed its brain and grew into the scariest creature on earth .

WM2:  How many bones did they find?

WM1 : I saw a picture showing 15 fragments.

WM2 : So they make all these claims for it based on 15 fragments? It’s all supposition.

WM1 : One palaeontologist said it was an interesting hypothesis. A growing ear meant a growing brain, meant a growing a body becoming Tyrannosaurus.

WM2 : How does eating more mean you grow from 2 metres to 13 metres? The world has an obesity crisis but we grow fat, not bone.

 WM1 : Man is getting taller. We have grown 4 inches in 150 years. Better nutrition and obviously we are attracted to height. So inside 1000 years we will be one foot taller. Multiply that by millions of years and we’ll probably end up as tall as trees.

WM2 : I can accept the selective breeding bit, but Timurlengia didn’t read books on nutrition.

WM1 : Maybe the bigger brain and better ears gave him a bigger libido. If humans naturally fancy taller people, then dinosaurs fancied taller dinosaurs. Timurlengia ignored the less well endowed ladies and courted those with big vertebrae. Keep doing that for millions of years and your heirs will grow.

WM2 : So it’s all about reproduction then and who you fancy?

WM1 : Humans think about sex at least ten times a day and we have big brains. No-one has suggested it about Timurlengia....but since everyone is guessing, that’s as good a guess as anyone’s.