Troodon Pronunciation

Fun Facts

• ✓Troodon had the largest brain-to-body ratio of any non-avian dinosaur ever measured, roughly six times larger relative to body size than most other dinosaurs of similar mass.
• ✓Its eyes were enormous and faced partially forward, giving it binocular vision similar to an owl, which strongly suggests it hunted at dusk or dawn when other predators could not see as well.
• ✓Paleontologist Dale Russell famously published a 1982 thought experiment calculating that if Troodon had survived the extinction and continued evolving, it could have developed hands, an upright posture, and a brain comparable to a modern human by now.
• ✓Troodon teeth were so unusual when first discovered in 1855 that scientist Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden and later Joseph Leidy initially classified them as belonging to a lizard, not a dinosaur, a mistake that lasted over two decades.
• ✓Troodon fossils have been found in Alaska, well inside the Arctic Circle, suggesting it could survive months of winter darkness, possibly using its night-vision eyes to hunt through the long polar nights of the Late Cretaceous.