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T-Rex A Slow Mover
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.""
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.
Somewhere on this page I have hidden my signature.
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.