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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @06:38AM
Elephant gaits tend to be a bit different from horses. Camel and giraffe gaits are different from horses too.
Chickens don't even walk the exact same way ostriches do. Some parts are similar but the other parts are different.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzjorJfvF4U [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zkhov9pLYBM [youtube.com]
So a movie depiction of a t-rex walk could have just about as much chance of being as accurate as deriving it from an ostrich.
Would a T-Rex would move its head the same way as a chicken while walking? :).