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Could you run faster than a T. rex? According to new research, you may be able to pass one while walking.
In the movie “Jurassic Park” (Warner Bros, 1993), a bunch of terrified people try to escape T. rex, but science quickly cast a shadow over the movie beast and demonstrated that the Tyrannosaur King wouldn’t have been quick enough to bring down a jeep. Now the researchers have slowed down the big dinosaur even more.
New simulations based on tail movement have shown that T. rex was not even a fast walker. In fact, his preferred walking speed was just under 5 km / h, about half the speed of previous estimates. To put this in perspective, this is the average walking speed of a human, according to the British Heart Foundation.
Related: Image gallery: The life of T. rex
Tyrannosaurus rex, the largest of all carnivorous dinosaurs, lived in what is now the western United States approximately 66 million to 68 million years ago by the end of the Cretaceous period, and they probably have numbered in billions.
An adult T. rex reportedly measured around 40 feet (12 meters) long, 12 feet (3.6 m) high, and weighed approximately 11,000 to 15,500 pounds (5,000 to 7,000 kilograms) on average, according to the American Museum of Natural History At New York. The heaviest known T. rex, a heavy specimen found in Saskatchewan, Canada, and nicknamed “Scotty”, weighed a whopping 19,555 pounds (8,870 kg), Previously reported Live Science.
But how fast could such a large animal move? Previously, researchers answered this question by examining T. rexthe mass and height of the hips, sometimes incorporating the stride length of the preserved lanes. These estimates place a T. rexIts walking speed is roughly 4.5-6.7 mph (7.2-10.8 km / h), about as fast as a mediocre human runner.
For the new survey, rather than focusing on T. rexlegs, scientists have instead explored the role played by the vertical movement of the tyrannosaur’s tail, said Pasha van Bijlert, a master’s candidate in paleo-biomechanics at the Free University of Amsterdam, and lead author of the short story. study on T. rex Walking speed.
“Dinosaur tails were vital to the way they moved, in myriad ways,” van Bijlert told Live Science in an email. “Not only does it serve as a counterweight, but the tail also produces a lot of the force needed to move the body forward. It does this through two large muscles in the tail – the caudofemoral muscles – which pull the legs back with each step.
Passive and active
In the bipedal (two-legged) T. rex, the tail would have been passively suspended in the air but also actively engaged and naturally swinging up and down while walking. “This combination – passive suspension while being active in locomotion – is unique to dinosaurs; there are no living animals today with this function,” van Bijlert explained. “For this reason, we were very intrigued by his role in how T. rex would have worked. “
As a T. rex the tail swings, it stores and releases energy thanks to extensible ligaments. When the rhythm of a swinging tail reaches resonance – “the greatest movement response with the least effort” – that rhythm is known as the “natural frequency of the tail,” van Bijlert said. The natural frequency in a T. rex the tail would then indicate the frequency of the animal’s steps during an unhurried walk, the researchers wrote in the new study, published online April 21 in the journal. Royal Society Open Science.
Related: In pictures: a new look at T. rex and its loved ones
Be the model for researchers T. rex was an adult specimen known as “Trix”, in the collection of the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, the Netherlands. The study authors scanned and modeled the bones of Trix’s tail, referencing markings on the well-preserved vertebrae that showed where the ligaments were attached. From this digital bone and ligament reconstruction, they created a biomechanical model of the tail.
“The tail pattern gives you a probable step rate / rate for T. rex, but you also need to know how much distance it travels with each step, “van Bijlert said. To find out, the scientists took the stride length of a tyrannosaurus slightly smaller than Trix, adapting it to the size of Trix They determined that Trix’s step length would be 6.2 feet (1.9 m), then calculated the walking speed by multiplying the step frequency by the step length.
“Our base model had a preferred running speed of 2.86 mph [4.6 km/h], “which was significantly slower than previous estimates of walking speed,” van Bijlert said in the email. ” Depending on some of the assumptions about the ligaments and how the vertebrae rotate, you get slightly slower or faster speeds (1.79 to 3.67 mph [2.88 to 5.9 km/h]), but overall they’re all slower than previous estimates, ”he said.
Cover new ground
However, there is still some uncertainty in this range, as it focuses on the up and down movements of the tail, “and the muscles – as well as side-to-side movement – are not taken into account. account “, John Hutchinson, professor of evolution. biomechanics from the Royal Veterinary College in Hertfordshire, UK, told Live Science in an email.
“No one in their right mind thought dinosaurs had perfectly rigid tails (top / bottom or side / side), but this has been a neglected topic for locomotion,” said Hutchinson, who was not involved in the new research. “So this study covers new ground in an intelligent way with an original model.”
The new estimate also reflects “a strong emphasis on elastic storage,” the study authors wrote, and the storage capacity of tyrannosaur tails could be lower than the model suggests, Hutchinson added. Nonetheless, this flexible tail model “would be useful to integrate and compare with other approaches in the future,” he said.
As for T. rexNext steps in the study, study authors want to incorporate their flexible tail into racing models T. rex, said van Bijlert. Maximum running speed for a T. rex it’s believed to be between 10 and 25 mph (16 to 40 km / h), according to Hutchinson. Biomechanics researchers have long suggested that T. rexThe animal’s maximum running speed would be limited by the strength of its bones because the animal was so heavy. However, a flexible tail could change that by acting as a shock absorber while running, “allowing him to run faster without breaking his bones,” van Bijlert said.
“We would also like to apply our method to more species, as this could reveal interesting evolutionary adaptations of the role of the tail in locomotion,” he added.
Originally posted on Live Science.
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