[krapp]

I don't know, dinosaurs were around for hundreds of millions of years or more, and while they evolved, they never evolved intelligence. It only happened when a catastrophic event disrupted the natural equilibrium. I can't help but wonder if intelligence isn't something that tends to arise under extreme circumstances.

[potsandpans]

there's really no saying. mammals have been around for ~180 million years, so ~112 million before the mass extinction. The dinosaurs were on earth for about 165 million years.

Given the relative quickness that intelligence exploded in later hominids, who knows. we could know about some gibbon analog in the dinosaurs right now, that given just a little longer could've made it to human levels of intelligence.