Dr Angela Milner’s work on the skull of the feathered dinosaur Archaeopteryx, used CT scans to compare the relative size and complexity of its various brain components with that of modern birds. The results suggest that its brain was adequately equipped for flying.
At the top of this tree, I’m light-heady,
But I’m not scared to jump – I’m quite steady.
My brain-box, you see,
Has been scanned by CT,
So I know that my brain is ‘flight-ready’.
As I leap from a very great height
All my mates down below me take fright:
‘You daft feathered chump!
You’ll come down with a bump;
We belong on the ground, not in flight.’
But I’m making my own contribution
To finding a better solution
Than running away
And ending as prey –
What Darwin will call ‘evolution’.