SCIENCE & SOCIETY - #dinosaurs #Trex

YOU COULD PROBABLY

OUTRUN A T. REX

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Issue 14

28 August

Upper Secondary

A rare set of tyrannosaur footprints is giving

researchers insight into the walking speed of the

prehistoric beasts, and it’s possible that humans

might have been able to outrun them.

According to the new estimate, Tyrannosaurus rex

may have ambled as quickly as 8 kilometers per

hour slower than a plodding amateur marathon

runner or even a middle-aged power walker.

Well-preserved individual tracks can be used to

help identify the size and type of dinosaur that

created the imprint. Fossilized tyrannosaur tracks

are rare, even in areas where their skeletal fossils

are abundant, says Scott Persons, a vertebrate

paleontologist at the University of Alberta in

Canada, and lead author of the new study.

Containing three footprints, the new trackway was

found in 66-million-year-old rocks that formed

along an ancient shoreline in what is now Wyoming.

The first footprint is well preserved, with three toes

facing forward and one short, thumb-like toe facing

rearward. This arrangement marks its maker as a

meat-eating theropod dinosaur, Persons says.

The only theropods known to have lived in the

region at the time—and large enough to have

created the 47-centimeter-wide track—were

tyrannosaurs. If the trackmaker were the mighty T.

rex, it probably would have been an adolescent.

Even rarer sets of footprints, or

trackways, can reveal more,

says Persons, as the spacing and

arrangement of individual

footprints can provide insights

into dinosaur gaits and walking

speeds.

Just outside the tiny town of Glenrock, Wyoming the footprints

of a 66-million-year-old monster are cemented in stone. This

fossil trackway was brought to light with the help of University of Alberta paleontologist, Scott Persons. Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2016-01-track-tyrannosaur-trail.html#jCp

The other possibility, says Persons, is a smaller

theropod called Nanotyrannus lancensis, which

some paleontologists suggest is merely an

immature T. rex, as opposed to a separate species.

Whatever species made the track, the calculations

reveal that the creature had a “brisk walking

speed,” Persons says. To figure out just how fast it

was moving, Persons and his team first estimated

how high the dinosaur’s hips must have been

above the ground, based on the length of the

footprint.

Three different Tyrannosaurus specimens of different ages

(credit: David Hone / Los Angeles County Museum)

Using two common formulas, they determined

the creature’s hips were likely somewhere

between 1.56 and 2.07 meters off the ground.

Then, they measured the distance between the

footprints and used an equation based on

observations of living, walking bipeds to estimate

the dinosaur’s walking speed, yielding a result

between 4.5 and 8 kilometres per hour.

Measurements of a Tyrannosaur’s fossilized footprint

help researchers estimate that the ancient beast was at the time walking between 4.5 and 8 kilometers per hour

The analysis doesn't prove that T. Rex couldn't have

gone faster, however. Because trackways are

records of single events—one walk along a

lakeshore, for example—the odds are that any

particular set of footprints doesn’t capture a

dinosaur’s peak performance, says Thomas Holtz

Jr., a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of

Maryland, College Park.

Moreover, he notes, the types of sediment that are

good for preserving footprints are typically wet and

sloppy, not the best surface on which a dinosaur

could run full speed. McCrea agrees: “There are as

yet no known trackways of running tyrannosaurs,

so we don’t know for sure just what their upper

speed limit was.”

One previous study of a single footprint of a large

tyrannosaur suggests that the beast could have

been traveling as fast as 11 kilometers per hour (6.8

miles per hour), says Eric Snively, a vertebrate

paleontologist at the University of Wisconsin, La

Crosse. That's still a speed that a halfway decent

amateur runner could beat. “If you were out

walking a juvenile T. rex, you’d be comfortable at a

brisk walk,” he says. “If you were walking an adult,

you’d be jogging.”

Adapted from: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/01/you-could-probably-have-outrun-t-rex

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Question: How fast is a tyrannosaur believed to be able

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