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.""

Comments

interesting

[eizan]

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?

Re:Don't get in a bunch

[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.

Predators:

[Perdo]

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.

Re:Predators:

[JohnsonJohnson]

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:

[Guru1]

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.