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• Research groups
• Palaeontology
• Research themes
  • Dromaeosaur limb mechanics
  • Palaeopathology of dinosaur bone
  • Dinosaur track formation, preservation and interpretation
  • Theropod dinosaur respiratory system
  • Taphonomic controls on dinosaur soft-tissue preservation
  • LiDAR 3D digital mapping of palaeontological sites
  • Dinosaur gait modelling
  • Endocranial XRT studies of fossil vertebrates
  • Palaeoecology and palaeoenvironments of Hell Creek

Dinosaur gait modelling

Still frames taken from the locomotion simulations, the checkerboard pattern is at 1m intervals (Top: fixed trunk simulation; bottom: flexible trunk simulation)

Dinosaur gait modelling, in collaboration with Dr Bill Sellers (Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Manchester) and Professor Kent Steven (University of Oregon, USA), we are developing a set of biorealistic reference gaits for dinosaurs representing optimising for efficiency and performance over a range of speeds that can be used to aid understanding of the musculoskeletal physiology of giant animals.

We are currently investigating the effects of elastic storage in bipedal locomotion. This project uses a new simulation engine (Open Dynamics Enginge [ODE]) which is a bit faster and a lot more stable and results so far are very encouraging. We have also incorporated a high quality output mechanism allowing us to produce stills and animations at arbitrarily high resolutions. Currently we are working with various dinosaur reconstructions but there is scope for work on other bipeds such as birds, humans and early human fossils.

3D laser scan of hadrosaur metatarsal for musculoskeletal model

Everyone wants to know how fast the giant dinosaurs could go. Were these slow, lumbering animals that a human could easily outrun or could they manage high speeds and easily outpace the fastest human sprinter? There has been a lot of research into the is question of the last few decades and there is no concensus so far. We thought we would have a go answering this question and built a Tyrannosaurus rex simulation. With reasonable assumptions for the amount of muscle available and body size we were able to obtain running gaits with speeds from about 7 to 15 m/s (that is 25 to 54 km/h or 16 to 34 mph). These are relatively simple models at the moment but the results certainly suggest that a T. rex could easily outrun a human!

We are also utilising a combination of laser and CT scanning to collect raw data from dinosaur skeletons, followed by digital reconstruction using Dino-morph™ software (with Professor Kent Stevens, Oregon). This software was developed to model the articulation, pose of vertebrate skeletons and reconstruct the gait of bipedal dinosaurs. We then use GaitSym™ to generate physiologically optimised gaits and MARC to calculate skeletal loading.