Researchers recently showed a finding that came from analyzing footprints three-toed meat-eating dinosaurs left behind as they sprinted over soggy lakebed mud about tens of millions of years back.
According to the Live Science report, the theropods may have dashed as speedy as "a car driving on city streets."
Two sets of fossilized footprints at an area in La Rioja, Spain, revealed how the tracks' makers were dashing along with the speeds up to 44.6 kilometers per hour, achieving some of the top speeds ever estimated for theropod tracks, the new research specified.
Based on the researchers' analysis of the tracks, one dinosaur was found to have sped up "steadily and consistently as it ran, whereas the other swiftly changed its speed while it was still on the move.
Together, a related Reuters report indicated, both sets of footprints from the Cretaceous period's early part, about 145 million to 66 million years back, provide a distinctive snapshot of dinosaur mobility, not to mention behavior.
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Theropod dinosaur footprint
2 Methods Used
In achieving their finding, paleontologists used various methods to estimate running speeds in extinct dinosaurs, explained the study's lead author Pablo Navarro- Lorbés, a researcher at the Logroño, Spain-based University of La Rioja.
One approach constructed biomechanical models based on the bones and limp proportions of the dinosaurs. And the other, the speed approximation from tracks.
Called La Torre 6A-14, one set of the La Rioja tracks, has preserved five three-toed footprints roughly 32.8 centimeters in length and 11.9 inches in width.
La Torre 6B-1, the other trackway, comprises seven three-toed footprints that were slightly tinier, measuring 28.9 centimeters in length and 26.9 centimeters in width.
Based on the footprints' size, the theropods would have been from four to five feet, so the animals would have stood approximately seven feet tall and measured roughly 13 to 16 feet long "from the snout to the tip of the tail," explained Navarro-Lorbes.
Speed Calculated
While it was not possible to determine which genus of theropod made the tracks, resemblances between the footprints proposed that the pair of dinosaurs belonged to the same taxonomic group, were not one of the lineages directly linked to modern birds, non-avian, and were extremely "agile," the study specified.
To compute the running speeds of the theropods, the researchers used a formula that combined the hip heights and stride length of the dinosaurs.
This allowed them not just to estimate the speed of the animals with each step but detect the variations of speed, as well.
As a result, they discovered that the dinosaurs that made the 6A-14 trackway achieved just over 37 kilometers per hour, while the faster 6B-1 dinosaur dashed into the lead with a top speed of almost 45 kilometers per hour.
Theropod' Speed Compared with a Human-Runner's
To compare, the fastest speed ever timed in a human runner is 44.3 kilometers per hour, which was reached quite briefly in 2009 by Usain Bolt, the famed Jamaican sprinter, the New York Times reported.
However, as specified in the study published in the Scientific Reports journal, while the running prowess of Bolt has been well-recorded, extinct dinosaurs are said to be very fortunate.
Trackways can show the running speeds of the theropods are remarkably rare. Therefore, these footprints from northern Spain provided a distinctive opportunity for the researchers to validate theropod speed approximates produced before by other scientists examining the bones of the animals.
Navarro-Lorbes said fast-running theropod tracks are rare in the fossil record. Examining them and verifying some other studies carried out from various approaches is certainly "great news for us."
Information about the theropods is shown on Benjamin Burger's YouTube video below:
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