What Did Dinosaurs Think About? by Ronan Le Loeuff
Jon Trevelyan (UK)
At first glance, What Did Dinosaurs Think About? looks like a slightly mischievous title attached to a familiar subject. Dinosaurs, after all, have been thought about endlessly; whether they themselves did much thinking is another matter. Ronan Le Loeuff’s book makes no claim to settle that question definitively, but it does something arguably more interesting – it asks what sort of sensory world dinosaurs inhabited, and how that might have shaped their behaviour.
This is very clearly a popular science book, and it wears that badge lightly and confidently. Written during the COVID lockdowns, it has the feel of a knowledgeable palaeontologist thinking aloud at speed, moving briskly from one idea to the next, determined not to let the narrative stall. The prose races along, the chapters are short, and the text is peppered with (moderately) funny jokes that keep things buoyant without tipping into whimsy. Readers looking for exhaustive footnotes or extended methodological debates will not find them here – and that is plainly not the point.
The intended audience is the interested amateur: readers who already know what a hadrosaur is, who are comfortable with evolutionary thinking, and who are curious rather than cautious. Le Loeuff respects that audience. He does not talk down, but neither does he linger. Ideas are introduced, illustrated, and then carried forward, sometimes at the cost of caveats that an academic reader might wish had been spelled out more fully.
One of the book’s quiet strengths lies in how it showcases genuinely modern techniques without turning them into a lecture. The discussion of dinosaur brains, for example, draws on CT scanning of fossil skulls to reconstruct endocasts and estimate encephalisation quotients (EQs). These methods allow palaeontologists to compare brain size relative to body mass across extinct and living animals, offering at least a rough handle on relative cognitive potential. The book sensibly avoids simplistic claims about “intelligence”, but it does give readers a clear sense of how far the field has moved beyond vague nineteenth-century ideas of dinosaurs as dull-witted reptiles.
More broadly, the book is organised around dinosaur sensations rather than abstract cognition. Sight, smell, hearing, taste, balance and other, more obscure sensory modalities are explored using a mix of fossil anatomy, comparative biology and physical modelling. This turns out to be a very effective way of grounding speculation. It is easier to think about what a dinosaur might have perceived than what it might have thought, and the sensory approach gives the reader something tangible to hold on to.
For instance, the discussion of smell draws on the relative size of olfactory bulbs; balance and posture are linked to inner-ear anatomy; vision to eye placement and optic lobes. Taste and touch are treated more cautiously, but still within a comparative framework. At times, the confidence of the narrative slightly outpaces the uncertainty of the evidence, but that is an almost unavoidable feature of popular science writing, and the author is generally careful not to present speculation as fact.
One particularly enjoyable section focuses on the North American hadrosaur Parasaurolophus, whose spectacular crest-like skull structure has long fascinated palaeontologists. Le Loeuff revisits the idea that the crest functioned as a resonating chamber, producing sounds whose pitch changed as the animal grew. As juveniles matured, lengthening internal tubes would have generated deeper calls, while adults retained the ability to hear the higher-frequency sounds made by younger individuals. From this, a range of behavioural possibilities emerges: age-specific communication, parental responses to juvenile calls, and perhaps more complex social organisation than is often assumed.
It is here that the book is at its most engaging. The evidence is real – grounded in anatomy, physics and hearing ranges – but the conclusions remain suggestive rather than dogmatic. The reader is invited to imagine dinosaur societies structured by age, communication and learning, including the entertaining (and oddly plausible) notion of juvenile “gangs” of dinosaurs, loosely analogous to age-segregated groups seen in many modern animals. It is speculative, certainly, but it is also restrained and thought-provoking.
In contrast to more data-heavy or argument-driven books on dinosaur behaviour, this sits closer to the reflective, idea-led end of popular science, inviting readers to explore possibilities rather than adjudicate debates.
In the end, What Did Dinosaurs Think About? knows exactly what it wants to be. It does not attempt to rewrite dinosaur science, nor does it pretend to offer definitive answers to unanswerable questions. Instead, it opens a window onto how palaeontologists use new tools and comparative thinking to explore dinosaur lives from the inside out. That the book was written during the COVID lockdowns perhaps explains its brisk pace, conversational tone and sense of intellectual restlessness – the feeling of a scientist thinking things through, following ideas where they lead, and enjoying the process. For readers interested in dinosaurs as living, sensing animals rather than museum skeletons, it is an entertaining, informative, and genuinely stimulating read.
Who is this book for?
This book is aimed squarely at the interested amateur: readers who enjoy popular science, already have some familiarity with dinosaurs, and are curious about how modern palaeontology actually works. It is not an academic synthesis, and it does not attempt to resolve technical debates. Instead, it prioritises engagement, plausibility and narrative momentum. Readers looking for a lively, thoughtful exploration of dinosaur senses and behaviour will enjoy it – those seeking exhaustive referencing or methodological rigour should look elsewhere.
About the author
Ronan Le Loeuff is a French palaeontologist and science writer with a long-standing interest in dinosaur evolution, behaviour and the public communication of science. He has worked extensively on dinosaur material from Europe and Africa, and has published both technical papers and popular books on prehistoric life. What Did Dinosaurs Think About? reflects his ability to translate modern palaeontological research into accessible, imaginative and engaging prose for a general readership.
What Did Dinosaurs Think About? by Ronan Le Loeuff, Johns Hopkins University Press (December 2025), paperback (172 pages), ISBN: 978-1421452074