TST Trainer
Takeaways
MODE:
~
5 minutes
of takeaways.
Animals.
10 random takeaways.
1.
Jurassic Park gave dinosaurs a sharper mind to match their sharp teeth. The idea is speculative, but it is not pure fantasy. Crows are dinosaurs, and they are very smart. Their intelligence sharpened over a few million years, building on a bird-style brain with roots going back at least 100 million years. So while we have no proof that non-avian dinosaurs reached crow-level smarts, it is reasonable to suspect that some cousin theropod lines may have been very intelligent. Over 170 million years of dinosaur evolution, it is fun to wonder about the smartest species. Were some crow-smart? Smarter?
2.
From History: From 538.8 to 251.902 million years ago.
287 Million years: From burrowing to extinction.
The Paleozoic Era is marked by the rise of complex animal burrowing life about 539 million years ago. It also saw the rise of our ancestors, the synapsids, who came to dominate the era. Their reign, and the era itself, ended 252 million years ago with the end-Permian mass extinction, a volcanic cascade event that drove rapid global warming and widespread environmental collapse. In the Mesozoic Era that followed, mammals barely survived the age of dinosaurs.
3.
Dogs and wolves are both Canis lupus because they can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. Dogs are classified as a subspecies shaped by human selection, not a separate species. This highlights how species definitions rely primarily on reproductive compatibility, with behavior and appearance playing secondary roles.
4.
From History: circa 15 Million Years Ago
Inferior frontal gyrus homologues, Mirror neuron systems
Great ape communication goes back roughly 15 million years, long before human language. What we call language didn’t emerge from nothing. It grew out of older systems of sounds, gestures, and signals shared across animals as evolution progressed.
5.
From crows teaching tool use to humans building libraries, cultural transmission allows knowledge to outlive the individual. It is one of evolution’s most powerful amplifiers, letting useful behaviors spread faster than genes alone ever could.
6.
From History: Lived 152 to 145 million years ago.
Stegosaurus is the classic late Jurassic stegosaur — the famous plated dinosaur with a spiked tail. By the time it appeared in the Morrison Formation of the western United States, the stegosaur branch had already been evolving for millions of years, making Stegosaurus a later, polished form of a much older dinosaur design.
7.
The Congo river split Bonobos and chimpanzees about 1.5 million years ago. Chimpanzees are stronger, more aggressive, and have lighter skin. Bonobos have darker skin from birth and are thinner and more bipedal.
8.
From History: 238 Million years ago (+/- 5 million)
Fully open hip socket (perforated acetabulum)
The biggest differences often begin with a shared beginning. T. rex, Brontosaurus, Triceratops, and modern birds seem wildly different, yet all came from the same deep ancestral root: a single population of a single species. A good reminder of evolutionary diversity.
9.
“Fur” and “hair” are not biologically distinct in primates; all great apes have hair made of the same material. What changes over evolution is not the follicle pattern, but hair thickness and density. That ancient pattern long predates humans. Our sparse, human-like appearance represents an extreme shift in hair behavior—likely tied to sweating, endurance movement, and changing lifestyles.
10.
From History: ~201 Million Years Ago
Cause: Massive Volcanic Eruptions
About 201 million years ago, massive volcanic eruptions disrupted climate and oceans as Pangea began to split. Many competitors vanished. Dinosaurs did not just survive the crisis; they inherited the world it left behind.
TST Trainer
(c) 2025-2026 TouchstoneTruth.
Writing and coding by Michael Alan Prestwood.
(c) 2025-2026 TouchstoneTruth.
Writing and coding by Michael Alan Prestwood.
