Fossil Tracks Reveal Lightning Speed of Dinosaurs

Ancient 2-meter tall theropods could have outrun most humans. View in browser

Image credits: Pablo Navarro-Lorbés Fossil Tracks Reveal Lightning Speed of Dinosaurs Ancient 2-meter tall theropods could have outrun most humans. Joshua Learn, Contributor December 9, 2021                                                                                                                                                                                (Inside Science) -- All that's left is footprints in fossilized mud, but the tracks reveal how some theropods of the Lower Cretaceous may have ran as fast as Usain Bolt at his best sprint. "Our speeds are the third faster dinosaur tracks registered to date," said Pablo Navarro-Lorbés, a doctoral student in paleontology at the University of La Rioja in Spain who studied the prints. Starting in the 1980s, thousands of dinosaur tracks dating between 125 million and 120 million years old were discovered in the area around La Rioja. Navarro-Lorbés and his colleagues wanted to see how fast some of the three-toed theropods may have been traveling, homing in on the tracks of two individuals with long strides. Theropods include a diverse group of dinosaurs that moved on two legs, including tyrannosaurs, velociraptors, and many others. One of the La Rioja tracks includes five footprints over a span of about 43 feet (13 meters), though one footprint in the middle was presumably lost to the fossil record. The other includes seven footprints over about 56 feet (17 meters), with the last print indicating... Read more Copyright 2021 American Institute of Physics. Inside Science syndicates its articles, columns, blogs and videos to news organizations. To initiate syndication, or request permission to republish our content (on a one-time or continuing basis), please contact Inside Science at insidescience@aip.org. News organizations seeking permission to republish Inside Science content must fully credit Inside Science as the original source of the content, include the author byline, and republish the original, unaltered form (excluding content titles, headlines, or sub-headlines). The reprint format can be seen here. Copyright conditions and usage terms are subject to change at any time without consent or any type of prior notice. To unsubscribe from all future mailings from Inside Science please click here. To manage your email subscriptions please click here.

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