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Science

T-Rex A Slow Mover 31

Posted by Hemos from the slowly-moving-along dept.
Ant writes "Link: New models of the leg muscles of Tyrannosaurus Rex suggest that a real T-Rex might not have passed the screen test for "Jurassic Park." Stanford University researchers writing in the British journal Nature this week suggest that a T-Rex could not have been able to run as fast as the one in the movie -- and might not have been able to run at all. "There is no way you could fit enough muscle into its body for that kind of locomotion," said John Hutchinson, co-author of the Nature article. "You wouldn't have enough room left over for all the other body parts.""
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T-Rex A Slow Mover More

T-Rex A Slow Mover

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  • interesting (Score:1, Interesting)

    by eizan ( 138350 )
    I find it interesting how much of hollywood tries to portray dinosaurs as savage beasts. how many future civilizations would call us humane, with the we way kill each other so easily?
    • I find it interesting how much of hollywood tries to portray dinosaurs as savage beasts.

      it's a good guess, if you've seen salt water crocodiles [geocities.com] (sorry about the geocities link)

      • >it's a good guess, if you've seen salt water crocodiles

        i don't think so -- crocodiles are cold-blooded reptiles

        my understanding is that dinosaurs are thought to be more closely related to birds, and probably warm-blooded

        -Kevin

  • Jurassic Park: Special Edition (Score:3, Funny)

    by Incon ( 543198 ) on Thursday February 28, 2002 @12:22AM (#3082391)
    Maybe that label on the rear-view mirror should have said:

    "T-Rexs are slower than they appear"
    • Maybe that label on the rear-view mirror should have said:

      Don't be silly, it's always the side mirror that has the problem with perception.. so the Side mirror would need to warn about T-Rexs being slower than they appear.

      "Dude, I'm going to overclock my T-Rex, get him up to 40 mph!"
  • ...how fast do you really have to be? I can't stroll at 30mph!
    "Wah! It's gonna catch us and eat us!"
    "Don't be silly dear, that's just Dino out for his morning walk..."
  • What one group of researchers say doesn't make something the truth. On the other hands, just because we want to believe that the T-rex is the fast-moving creature featured in Jurassic Park doesn't make it true either.

    I however, tend to believe that the T-Rex was a fast-moving creature. Perhaps not as fast as portrayed in Jurassic Park, but certainly fast enough to make a bald lawyer crap his pants and run to the bathroom, allowing his pants to fall down.

    At least one piece of evidence suggests T-Rex was a very active animal -- at least amongst themselves. Bones of one discovered T-rex had large masks on them, the marks indicative of another T-rex's tooth.

    But hey, two big slow creatures could bite eachother as well -- don't need to be fast for that.

    • Re:Don't get in a bunch (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I think you should also evaluate how fast is it really usefull for these guys to move depending on habitat and feeding habits. 45 mph doesn't work that well in mountanous or forrested terrain. Even if you're the size of T-Rex hitting a tree is going to make an impression.



      As for the feeding habits, being able to run 45 mph only makes sense (from an evolutionary standpoint) if you have to be able to run that fast to either catch prey or run away, but I doubt the king of the dinosaurs was designed for the tactical withdrawl. I also find it hard to believe that T-rex lived off of killing dinosaurs this fast, they'd mostly be smaller than him meaning less caloric intake for the effort. If you look at your large hunting cats today that rely on speed to catch prey they tend to go after animals their mass or larger (up to 2x even?)



      It just doesn't make sense to me that T-rex would be that fast. I always viewed him as killing and eating large and slow dinos, and stealing carcases from smaller preditors when he had the chance. Of course iana palentoligist, but sometimes I doubt how much they really "know" anyway.

  • Years and years ago (like 18th-19th century), many believed that dinosaurs were too large to stand up and must have dwelt in ponds. Does anybody else think this sounds like similar thinking? There is only so much that one can learn by looking at bones.

  • Predators: (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Perdo ( 151843 ) on Thursday February 28, 2002 @02:07AM (#3082691) Homepage Journal
    Looking at pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime and Abebe Bikila (the Ethiopian marathon runner) tells me that muscle mass has nothing to do with running speed. The hippopotamus is as fast as a horse. Basiliscus basiliscus also called the "Jesus Christ lizard" can run on water with quite thin musculature. The best comparison comes from the ostrich, with a top speed of nearly 40 mph. I don't see an incredible problem with that body type scaling from 3 inches to 8 feet while still maintaining speed. In fact, the speed seems to scale too. I'll be the last one to say that a Rex with 13 foot long legs could run at over 100mph but to say that Rex, with a body type that scales as well as it seems too, could not have been slow. To place one foot in front of the other in a bipedal gate requires dynamic movement. Dynamic movement and balance when your legs are 13 feet long dictates a minimum natural walking gate in the 10 mph range. Rex could not have used stealth. Rex may have been a scavenger. But wasn't there a duckbill skeleton found with a T Rex tooth imbedded in the spine that had the bone heal around the tooth? So Rex went after live prey and did not use stealth. That requires speed. All predators have speed. Rex had it too.
    • T-rex may not have used stelth but that does not mean he was fast. It just means that his prey was slower then him.

      As for the duckbill..... That was a damn lucky dino to get away after a T-rex had it's jaws on it's neck .

      Some predators have speed. Some predators have speed for short periods of time. Some predators can run at full speed all the time.

      Could a T-rex move slow Maybe. Maybe not. There isn't really enough evidence to tell.

    • Re:Predators: (Score:5, Interesting)

      by JohnsonJohnson ( 524590 ) on Thursday February 28, 2002 @12:17PM (#3084582)
      I don't understand what you're trying to say. Although marathoners are fast: being able to string together a series of miles at near world class pace, over the traditional sprinting distances of 400m or less they are not competitive. Athletes who are better at the sprints tend to be of the mesomorphic body type like Maurice Green, Carl Lewis, Ato Boldon, Michael Johnson. Ectomorphic types like Bikila tend to excel at the distance events where a high rate of speed is maintained for a long period, like a deer, not at maximum speed dashes like a cheetah.

      Furthermore, attempting to extrapolate between such radically different body plans as a human; who in the larger scheme of things is a poor runner in all regimes, an ostrich, whose body is essentially all leg and neck and a T-Rex, with a much different torso to leg length ratio from both ostriches and humans is an exercise fraught with difficulty.

      It seems the current problem is to attempt to determine the maximum speeds of which T-Rexes and their prey are capable. That could give one a clue as to the T-Rex's hunting style: if a T-Rex is much faster than its prey it may hunt like a cheetah, if its about the same speed it may hunt like a tiger; cornering its prey then making a very short rush, or if it has good endurance it may hunt like a wolf by running its prey to exhaustion.

      Whatever the final probable outcome, attempting to intuit the result from the performance of human athletes is probably not going to give any useful information. I am not an expert but I believe that if anything at this point paleontology is only beginning to realize how little information we have about the living habits of dinosaurs. All we really have is a decent idea about the variety of body plans of dinosaurs, and as far as I know even the warm blooded versus cold blooded debate is not completely settled yet either. Similarly biomechanics is still an infant science, we have only recently come to understand the aerodynamic principles that allow a bumblebee to fly and still don't have a very good idea about the possible range of movement of the giant saurapods.

      • Re:Predators: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Big_Breaker ( 190457 )
        There is a misconception that humans are terrible athletes when measured against the animal kingdom.

        In fact humans are fanastic as one event: long distance running in hot weather. We are custom designed to avoid heat exhaustion during long exertions.

        Our upright posture and lack of body hair maximizes the shedding of heat.

        Our oversized brains have huge amounts of redundancy to avoid passing out when a large fraction of the cells begin failing. Notice how humans can tolerate alcohol so well? Same idea.

        One school of thought for how early man hunted was that he chased deer until they passed out from heat stroke on the hot, dry plains.

    • Re:Predators: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Guru1 ( 521726 )
      Looking at pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime and Abebe Bikila (the Ethiopian marathon runner) tells me that muscle mass has nothing to do with running speed.

      Arnold and Abebe are still around the same size. You need to take a look at something with a large volume. Building tall buildings is very similar. The taller you build it, the stronger each support needs to be. If you need your 10th story to support 50 above it, then your 10th story may need to become thicker. Add one more story on top, every story under it needs to become a little thicker.. all the way down to the bottom story which will need to have massive supports. What this means for an animal is that for every inch they go up, they go out a few inches.. and since volume compounds inch per inch, the weight they increase by gaining that much height is incredible.

      Basically, the taller they got, the larger their bones had to be to support their weight, the larger their hearts had to be to send blood through their large body, which means they would need larger lungs to support the oxygen into their blood, which would mean their inner cavity would be incredibly massive.. which would mean simple massive bulk. Overall a large weight. While they could walk easily, do the math for how much weight that would be landing on one leg in full stride at 40 mph. (I can't do the math, I just know it's big *grin*)

      Another example. Mechwarriors are most likely never going to happen, simply because a running robot is impossible with today's materials. We don't know of any material that could be lightweight enough to create a 60 foot robot that could run without it's own weight crushing its own legs.. and we know dinosaurs didn't have any magic materials in their legs.
      • And building a water pump that can lift a gallon of water 200 feet while fitting in a 4 foot radius is impossible with today's materials... unless you are a tree. Bones and muscles have a compressibility to them. Your joints and muscles act in coordination to act as shock absorbers. Your tendons can hold tremendous tensions in them creating very impressive spring forces. My eye has a quantum efficiency that rivals most CCDs. My ear drum can detect acoustic vibrations which oscillate at the width of an atom. Bacterial chains called bionites can grow and be harvested into ropes with 100-1000 times the tensile strength of steel.


        Just because I can't build it doesn't mean it can't exist. I can't think of a mechanical analog to the growth of an abalone shell or a giant sea snail's shell.


        Models are useful, but don't take them too far.

      • Basically, the taller they got, the larger their bones had to be to support their weight, the larger their hearts had to be to send blood through their large body, which means they would need larger lungs to support the oxygen into their blood, which would mean their inner cavity would be incredibly massive.. which would mean simple massive bulk. Overall a large weight. While they could walk easily, do the math for how much weight that would be landing on one leg in full stride at 40 mph. (I can't do the math, I just know it's big *grin*)

        OK, here's the engineering problem in a nutshell:

        • Length is, by definition, linear.
        • Strength, in materials, scales with the second power (square) of length.
        • Mass scales with the third power (cube) of length.

        So going back to that ostrich, if you somehow grew an ostrich to twice normal height, all other things being equal, it would weigh 8 times (2^3) as much, and would require four times (2^2) the muscle and bone cross-sectional area, to stand.

        In my opinion, the ostrich is a great example. Compared to a smaller bird, say a turkey, it's mostly legs. Double it's size, it has to be mostly leg; scale it up to T.Rex size, it's almost ALL leg, just as these researchers say.

        Well, DUH. I coulda told 'em that, with little more than a pocket calculator.

        This isn't to say that I think T.Rex and his ilk couldn't run; perhaps their muscles were more efficient than current reptiles and birds, or they adapted a running motion that used their mass to aid locomotion rather than impede it. There are many creatures in nature who's performance can't be explained easily, this may be another such case.

      • a robot's height, and maintain it's aspect ratio, you get an eight fold increase in volume and therefore weight but only a four fold increase in foot size. So, A 40 foot tall humanoid robot would weigh 216 times as much as its 6-foot tall counterpart while having only 36 times as much foot surface area. So, the 200lb, 6-foot tall robot would exert about 1.4 pounds per square inch while the 1t's counterpart would exert just over 8 pounds per square inch walking pressure. The true problem in creating a 40 foot tall robot is that it could only be used on hardened concrete, because it would sink in anything else. Not to mention the inefficiencies of armoring something with such a terrible volume to surface area ratio. Granted, spheres cannot walk around and look cool, but you can stack about 14 times as much armor on the same volume at a given weight. Makes DARPA look like a bunch of fools for issuing a spec for powered personal armor.

        Something to consider about T-Rex, it seems to be the pinnacle of 250million years of evolution compared to just 50 million years that mammals have had. It is quite possible that their muscles had much greater efficiency than any modern animal has. This is somewhat supported by their fantastic size, which no modern animal can achieve except when supported by water.

        Also, the earth is about .3% heavier than it was 50 million years ago due to meteor deposition. .3% is nothing in astronomical terms but could mean everything in efficiency. An elephant that weighs 7 tons would loose 50 pounds if sent back 50 million years.

        If the Meteor theory is true, It also added it's mass to the earth, but I doubt it would be enough to be significant.
  • Does anyone besides me remember that news story from a few weeks ago stating that large therapod dinosaurs similar to Tyrannosaurus Rex did run fast. The proof being fossil footprints showing the same dinosaur both walking and running. Kind of a smoking gun on the whole therapods run fast thing don't you think?
    • except that the footprints in question came from a dino the size of an ostrich, which we know is quite fast. We need to find running big dino tracks to say for shure that the speed available to smaller dinos was available to the big ones. The problem being any tracks would be over twenty feet apart making finding the next on in the chain problematic. There is also the problem of finding that a Rex, while possibly being able to run, might not be able to run in mud, where there is the best chance of track preservation.

      Which makes me realize my theory is not falsifiable, meaning it is probably wrong.:)
  • According to this story [cnn.com], megalosaurus (doesn't exactly sound small), a "mid-size" version of T-rex, did run at speeds of up to 20mph.

  • Here we go again (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Bumble bees cannot fly, either.
    • Bumble bees cannot fly, either.

      Yup, if a scientist had found only dead bumblebees, they would have claimed (with proof) that bumblebees could not have flyed and would have said the wings must have been used for heat dirpersion or some other crap.

      And before anyone goes on to say that it was recently discovered that its small vorticies that blablabla makes the bumblebee fly, remember that they had to turture countless specimens before they admitted their secret of flight. (wind tunnels, glue, sticks, etc) wich requires live specimens.
      Remember kids, anytime a scientist says something is impossible, he's no longer a scientist, he's a techno-monk, relying on faith and math rather than empirical observations.

  • Jack Horner the paleontologist has been saying this for several months- he even had a special on TLC where he talked about it and presented his evidence. (I believe that's where CNN got their image from). Why dont they have any mention of him in the article? He's probably the one who suggested this idea in the first place, being the T-rex guy of paleontology. If you do a google search for "jack horner t rex" you find plenty of stories about his research on this particular subject.
  • I wonder what the anthropologist out at the Denver Natural History Museum (the long-haired-ex-hippie-looking-guy whose name I can't remember) that was all over PBS and Discover a few years ago with the cross-section of a T-Rex thigh bone that was hollow (honey-combed) like a bird and showing off the scarification on the bone of fast twitch muscle has to say about this?
    • I don't know who you're talking about either, but if he was really any kind of expert on dinosaurs, he must have been a paleontologist. Anthropologists study human beings. ;)
  • You have to love these researchers and their conjecture.

    Similar studies of fish can't explain their speed and conclude that they have insufficient muscle mass to explain their locomotion. This is known as Gray's Paradox. The following URL explains this and how Scientists might only recently be approaching an explanation. It also provides insight into how these 'studies' are done and the kinds of crazy assumptions that can often be made.

    http://www.mbl.edu/publications/LABNOTES/4.1/scu p. html

    So, forgive me if I run rather than walk away the next time I see a T-Rex approaching me.
  • Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.
  • This article [heise.de] (in German) in Telopolis talks about the chase scene in JP. If you look at the dino, you'll see that it always has one foot on the ground and that his steps are rather slow, less than two a second. Stephen Gatesy from Brown University calculated from that that it only was doing about 10 - 15 mph. The film makers said a faster moving T-Rex just wouldn't have looked right.
  • ... is to clone a T. Rex and turn it loose among a bunch of difficult-to-catch prey animals, and observe what happens. (I suggest the next Republican national convention -- those politicos may not be terribly fast, but they sure are slippery and elusive.) Now, I've got this fossilized mosquito I pulled out of some amber ...

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