Progressive Palaeontology 2024 conference report.

The 20th instalment of the Progressive Palaeontology conference was held from 17th-20th of June 2024 at the University of Bristol, UK. Progressive Palaeontology gives postgraduate students experience of presenting at a conference to an audience of their peers, and the opportunity to form networks with researchers at their career stage. The conference was organised on behalf of the Palaeontological Association by Hady George, Thomas Farrell, James R.

How smart was T. rex? Testing claims of exceptional cognition in dinosaurs and the application of neuron count estimates in palaeontological research.

Recent years have seen increasing scientific interest in whether neuron counts can act as correlates of diverse biological phenomena. Lately, Herculano-Houzel (2023) argued that fossil endocasts and comparative neurological data from extant sauropsids allow to reconstruct telencephalic neuron counts in Mesozoic dinosaurs and pterosaurs, which might act as proxies for behaviors and life history traits in these animals. According to this analysis, large theropods such as Tyrannosaurus rex were long-lived, exceptionally intelligent animals equipped with "macaque- or baboon-like cognition", whereas sauropods and most ornithischian dinosaurs would have displayed significantly smaller brains and an ectothermic physiology.