If dinosaurs were here so much longer than humans, why did their natural selection not account for higher intelligence, as is the case in humans?
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Perhaps this is already answered here: https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/11254/why-were-dinosaurs-not-as-smart-as-we-are?rq=1 – jamesqf Jun 01 '17 at 19:05
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Some dinosaurs are extremely intelligent, being able to use tools and make tools. However, this is a duplicate question, VTC – iayork Jun 01 '17 at 19:08
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Welcome to Biology.SE. Even if the question is short, it is sufficient to show a good number of common misconception about evolutionary processes. I'll be brief in commenting on them and will invite you to seek for more knowledge in an intro course and related posts.
Phrasing
their natural selection
Natural selection is a concept (the concept of fitness variance in the population correlated with an additive genetic variance). Natural selection is not a thing that is owned be a population. It is not "theirs"
Your misunderstandings
Evolutionary time
Any living species on earth has 3.5 billion years of evolutionary time. There is no exception to that as we all share a common ancestor. Humans are not less evolved than a crocodile or a bacteria. We all have the exact same evolutionary time.
Evolution of intelligence
Higher intelligence is NOT what natural selection will tend to. Having high intelligence is most often rather negatively correlated with fitness.
Related posts:
Source of information
You would make good use of a very short and very introductory course to evolutionary biology. There is a large number of free ressources online. You might want for example to consider Understanding Evolution by UC Berkeley.
