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from the why-did-the-chicken-cross-the-racetrack dept.
In a quest to learn how two-legged dinosaurs moved, scientists watched their descendants — birds — run around on a race track. After all, chickens were once carnivorous dinosaurs that stalked the Earth on giant drumsticks.
For all the movies that show dinosaurs chasing after humans, we don't actually know much about what a walking or running dinosaur looked like. Footprints and fossils, for example, can't tell us whether a dino strode or strutted. "They're static records of an animal or its movement," says Peter Bishop, a scientist at the Queensland Museum. For movement, he says, "That's when you've got to study animals that are living today."
Only, there aren't any dinosaurs wandering around anymore. So Bishop and his colleagues turned to the next best thing: birds, the only surviving descendants of two-legged dinos called theropods. Bishop and his colleagues rounded up a dozen species from cute little quail and turkeys to long-legged ostriches and emus. Then they sent the birds walking and running down a racetrack.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday February 27 2018, @03:41PM (2 children)
I doubt you'll see many humans learning to run around on six legs. Body structure, which based on genetics and mechanics, strongly limits what gaits an animal can possibly have. Even if there are environment differences, one merely needs to look at enough animals to find all those differences.
A more serious problem is that gait mechanics greatly changes as one increases body size. As Sourcery42 indicated, the jerky movement of small animals just isn't going to happen in a multi-ton animal.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:26PM (1 child)
True, however: there's lots of socio-behavioral variation [google.com] within the available gaits.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 28 2018, @04:53PM