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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: 3, Informative) by insanumingenium on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:47PM (1 child)
Pardon the source, but this [dailymail.co.uk] was the best drawing of a chicken skeleton I could find in short order. Ironically in an article about trying to make a chicken walk more like a T-Rex. I am not a biologist or archeologist, but the gross scale comparison seems justified, one joint in each direction, the top one easy to miss on a chicken, the bottom one easy to miss on a T-Rex.
(Score: 2) by donkeyhotay on Tuesday February 27 2018, @09:57PM
Thank you, I see now.