T. rex may have struggled to chase down speeding vehicles as the movie Jurassic Park would have us believe but the world’s most fearsome carnivore was certainly no slouch, research out today suggests.
The University of Manchester study used a powerful supercomputer to calculate the running speeds of five meat-eating dinosaurs that varied in size from a 3kg Compsognathus to a six-tonne Tyrannosaurus.
The study – believed to be the most accurate ever produced – puts the T. rex at speeds of up to 18mph, fractionally quicker than a sportsman such as a professional footballer.
The bipedal Compsognathus, by comparison, could reach speeds of almost 40mph – that’s 5mph faster than the computer’s estimate for the fastest living animal on two legs, the ostrich.
The team – headed by biomechanics expert Bill Sellers and palaeontologist Phil Manning – say the accuracy of their results is due to the computer’s ability to use data relating directly to each dinosaur.
Woo! T Rex could book after all! What were the other 4 theropods?
5 comments:
Compsognathus? The little...two foot long...tinysaur? I'm thinking that 40 mph number is a tad high, but I guess I'd need to read the paper to be sure. Still, supercomputers. That's kind of awesome.
Compsognathus? The little...two foot long...tinysaur?
Hear that sonic boom and see the blur?
It's probably what the skeleton can do not what the muscular did.
I want to see studies done for the lungs, damnit, the lungs! A sauropod would have to pull HOW MUCH air down that tube at what rate and pressure?
In the book I just finished, Beaks and Horns, one of the papers in there argued that ceratopsian therein, Chasmosaurus, was a ectotherm based on growth rates and food necessities. I'm going to do a blog post on it, but after I finish the Late Triassic Extinction post.
I've got that book. It's the only paper I really enjoyed in there, and it seems to work out pretty well. I'm having a real hard time finding that top speed article on Royal Soc. B. Any chance you can give me a link, sir?
It is interesting how much speed Compsognathus is credited to. I recently read a book, Why Size Matters: From Bacteria to Blue Whales by John Tyler Bonner that helps to shed light on some of this phenomenon (eg. an ant can carry 20 times their body weight but we would struggle carry another person our own weight. It was a good, quick read.
Zach: The only link I have is the top of the page and its a press release via Eureka Alert. I have an RSS aggregator that feeds me info as to when blogs are updated, news released, etc. to save me time browsing.
I agree that the chasmosaurus paper was the only one I liked. I am disappointed that no one attempted something like that for the hadrosaurs. The otehr papers, while a bit interesting, were nothing that I was really interested enough in to buy the book. I'm probably going to steer clear of the others in the series because its meant for the anatomists rather than my interests. That and I wish paleo books would STOP with the history lessons. There are a billion books with a billion different variants on those subjects and mostly I'm to the point where I can skip those sections. Or they're far too much travelogue. GIVE ME SCIENCE!
Anyways, while I thinkt the chasmosaurus paper was good, I have to say that I think that its missing something on the growth rates and behavior. While I understand wanting to use real life analogs as much as possible, I can't help but feel that time and again that the dinos were not something that has a good analog in the Cenozoic. Even using birds and reptiles. The author even notes that if the growth rates for deinosuchus were extrapolated from modern crocs ... and ended up with something like a 1000+ year growth perioid which we know is clearly wrong.
Sarda: woooo! Welcome back! Congratz on the kidd[o/a]! My daughter is one of my true joys! (see pix lower down on the blog). Thanx for the tip.
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