The Role of Carbon Dioxide in the Evolution of Intelligence: Solving the Dinosauroid Question

2025 · doi:10.32388/iknuzu
preprint OA: closed CC-BY-4.0
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Low atmospheric CO2 concentrations during the late Cenozoic Era may have favored the evolution of large, highly encephalized brains by facilitating efficient CO2 removal from tissues.

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Abstract

In this paper, I propose that the appearance of highly encephalized species on Earth during the past ca. 50 million years, and in particular the rapid encephalization of hominins during the past few million years, was favored by low CO2 concentrations and high O2/CO2 ratios in the atmosphere. This hypothesis is based on the high metabolic cost of the brain in multicellular creatures that requires not only a high oxygenation rate, but also an efficient removal of CO2 from tissues. Hence, the low atmospheric CO2 concentrations of the late Cenozoic Era could have generated large brains with a high neuron density, including the human one.
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