Dinosaurs have caught people’s fancy since a long time, with books and movies about dinosaurs doing unusually well. However, have you ever given a thought about what it would actually be like if dinosaurs actually lived amongst us? Turns out, they probably wouldn’t even have looked very much like the dinosaurs we know. In fact, they would probably be more human: a study surmised that had dinosaurs managed to survive, they would have evolved into intelligent “dinosauroids” – a humanoid dinosaur.

According to Dale Russell, who discovered the Troodon (also called the Stenonychosaurus), dinosaurs were on the way to becoming intellectual beings. These “dinosauroids” would have borne a strikingly close resemblance to humans. The Troodon possessed several features which hinted at this evolution, opposable thumbs and binocular vision amongst them. They are also thought of as being social animals. This has led to the belief that these dinosaurs were on the way to evolving into intelligent life forms.

Russell, during his experiment, realised that the Troodon’s brain size was much larger in comparison to its relative body size, as well as larger than was usual for dinosaurs. He ran the figures and came up with the fact that the dinosaur’s modern-day descendants would have pretty much the same brain volume as humans do.

This evolving brain would have changed dinosaurs’ appearance as well, moulding them into a humanoid figure. These “dinosauroids” would be capable of standing upright while still retaining reptilian features such as the scaly skin and lack of external genitals.

Come to think of it, had dinosaurs actually managed to survive to this day, they would probably have interacted with humans as freely and actively as other animals do, and while paleontologists have dismissed Russell’s theory for being a bit too improbable, it still remains an interesting way thought.

[sources: 1, 2]