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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

RoboFossil Reveals Locomotion of Beast from Deep Time [scientificamerican.com]

Some 290 million years ago a four-legged, plant-eating creature the size of large dog roamed what is now central Germany. It did not carry itself like most other tetrapods known from that time, belly low to the ground and limbs splayed out to the sides; instead it walked taller, tucking its limbs under its body for a more erect posture. That is the portrait emerging from a new multidisciplinary study that has reconstructed the locomotion of this long-extinct animal, called Orobates pabsti—in part by developing a robot version of the beast to test the physics of various gaits. And it adds to a growing body of evidence that the textbook account of when and how four-limbed animals conquered terra firma needs revision.

Interactive demo [biorob2.epfl.ch].

Reverse-engineering the locomotion of a stem amniote [nature.com] (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0851-2) (DX [doi.org])

Original Submission