A study reveals that the Tyrannosaurus rex was dinosaurio with better sense of smell between all carnivorous relatives, a discovery that leaves its reputation of scavenging animal in background.

It is the conclusion to that the investigators have arrived To give it Zelenitsky of the University of Calgary and Fran1cois Therrien of the Museum Royal Tyrrell, both Canadian institutions, after determining the volume and the form of the olfactory bulb of a great variety of dinosaurios of two legs that inhabited the Earth in the Jurassic period, between 200 and 145 million years back.

Besides the T. rex, between the examined terópodos is had including raptores, ornitomimosaurios, the imitadores lizards of birds similar to the ostriches and the primitive Archaeopteryx bird, that evolved from the smaller carnivorous dinosaurios.

POWERFUL SENSE OF SMELL

The olfactory bulb is the part of the brain associated with the sense of the sense of smell that is, in fact, at the end of the nasal graves. Naturally, the brain is not conserved but, thanks to technology TAC (computerized axial tomography), today it is possible to analyze the skull if it is in good state and inferring how it was.

Zelenitsky, main author of the study, explains that the fame of scavenging animal of the T. rex comes from its acute tracking sense of smell, something that does not correspond and so it is possible to be observed in the present animal.

“The olfatorios bulbs of great size are in birds and present mammals that depend to a large extent on their sense of smell to find meat, in animal that are active during the night and in that they patrol extensive areas”, it clarifies the paleontologist.

So the “king of the carnivorous dinosaurios” had to use his acute “nose” to give with his prey.

ARCHAEOPTERYX

Besides these tracks on the Biology and the behavior of the Tyrannosaurus, the study has allowed to know that the Archaeopteryx, the ancestor of the modern birds, had an olfactory bulb of a comparable size to the rest of terópodos and, therefore, also a good sense of smell.

A characteristic that does not conserve the modern birds, that generally see very well but has a very poor olfactory sense.

This discovery, says Therrien, leads back the idea that the sense of smell in the birds lost importance with respect to the view in the first ancestors, since had to produce “in some point of the evolution of the birds more outpost than the Archaeopteryx”.