Saturday, June 09, 2007

T. Rex Update

A brief update on this story. National Geographic reports the study's findings-

The team found the animal, hampered by a long tail and that heavy body, would have taken one to two seconds to make a quarter turn—far slower than a human.

"We now know that a T. rex would have been front-heavy, turned slowly, and could manage no more than a leisurely jog," Hutchinson, the lead study author, said.

Pretty much the same angle as the Fox News report and, I'm sure, all the rest of the media outlets that covered the story. And they even manage to mention that T. Rex probably wasn't as fast as depicted in Jurassic Park, that well-known reference film for palaeontologists.

"The method that we applied, creating a kind of computer sculpture of the body of a T. rex, takes into account the whole anatomy," he said.

Well, that's actually debatable- as I mentioned before the T. Rex is thought to have had the long, heavy tail to counter-balance the weight at the front of its body- and the tail was stiff to also aid it in turning. As it began to turn right, for example, the tail would have been whipped left to help it manoeuvre more quickly, the weight of the tail swinging it around- this study may have taken it's anatomy into account but not its bio-mechanics. And again they make comparisons to elephants- four pillar like legs to distribute weight- but do not even mention the T. Rex's slender legs and highly articulated feet. If pillar-leg elephant can move at 25mph why assume that more graceful T. Rex could only equal that speed when it's body structure seems to suggest a faster and more agile creature?

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