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New Research Shows Humans Could Outrun T. Rex
bongey writes: T-Rex would have a hard time even catching an average human running, much less Usain Bolt or Jeeps, without shattering their legs into pieces. New research based on simulations that include the load on the bones show that T-Rex would have a hard time running faster than 12 miles per hour (5.4 meters per second) without bones breaking. The new research correlates to speeds calculated from adolescence sized T-Rex dinosaur footprints in 2016, which showed walking speeds to be only 2-5mph, and estimated running speeds 11-18 mph. Gizmodo notes that while T. rex was unable to pursue its prey at high speeds, high speed is a relative term. "For reference, typical humans can sprint anywhere between eight to 15 miles per hour (elite athletes can exceed 20 mph). So to outrun a T. rex, many animals -- or fictional humans -- would still have to run like hell."
You don't need to run faster than a t-rex, you just need to be the 2nd slowest prey...
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...are slower than they appear
Wouldn't it have been cheaper and quicker to simply call Ken Ham and ask him?
Get it on! Bang a Gong!
While there seem to be a large number of people who keep thinking T-Rex is a hunter.
Have to say, I'm more and more in the camp which suggest that T-Rex is more like a vulture. T-Rex has a big noose, body for long walks, not sprints, etc.
New things are always on the horizon
And since not everyone is a top athlete, most of us would become a T-rex snack.
Most people can't even do 10mph.
If you click through and read the article, you will find a discussion that explains that this entire conclusion was based on a rare set of footprints that were found to be of a certain spacing. They then started a variety of different extrapolations, covering values such as estimating the height of the dinosaur's hips above the ground, the weight of the dinosaur and so on.
Their determination that this set of tracks came from a Tyrannosaur was made on the basis that there is no knowledge of any other matching species in that area at that time.
Having measured the stride of this dinosaur and estimated the height of its hips above the ground, they then used measurements taken from "living, walking bipeds" to make their claim.
Now, I'm all in favour of scientific research and analysis. I love reading about cutting edge insights to the world around us. I think it enriches our lives. On the other hand, when I read this article published on the Science website, the first thought that came to me was, "There are an awful lot of assumptions and approximations in here..."
They don't know, definitively, that this was a T-Rex.
They don't know what it was doing at the time the tracks were made [for example, if it had been stalking prey, maybe it was treading softly, moving slowly, so perhaps it's steps were uncharacteristic.
They don't know whether it was injured, or weak, or unwell. You can't determine the nutritional state of a hundreds-of-millions-of-years-dead dinosaur from a footprint, can you?
They are also assuming that things like the metabolic efficiency, the muscular strength and even the bone density of dinosaurs are all perfectly equivalent to what we see today. In other words, they are cherry-picking facts to fit their theories.
I am absolutely certain that there is some great research and excellent work being undertaken by the Team that made this announcement, but this is far, far short of science. This is assumption and theory and conjecture based upon an entirely incomplete fact base.
In one sense it is not worth being concerned over one-off articles like this. In the fullness of time we would expect scientific peer review to challenge and refine both the method of analysis and the final conclusions of this piece of work. Well, hopefully. The concern with this specific story is evidenced by the fact that it has been picked up and linked here, on slashdot. Which means it will be picked up by other science and tech news outlets and perhaps even broader news media. This is fine if the original work is robust and defensible, but in this case [at least as far as the original piece goes] that does not appear to be true... Oh well.
are certainly doing some very important research these days. What's next, speculative research on who of the ridiculous Marvel super heroes is ultimately the strongest?
Humans and dinosaurs have never lived at the same time, so there is not contemporary humans to compare the running speed to.
Thus, if you want to compare a T-Res to humans, you might as well compare with modern humans. And for a modern human, running speed is completely irrelevant, so the comparison is pointless.
It's just as pointless as wondering how many spears it would take to kill a T-Res, when no species at the time used spears. A modern human would probably be able to kill a T-Res in one hit - assuming that the T-Rex has enough of an infrared signature to get the missile to lock on.
Now we know why Jesus rode a velociraptor. Riding from Jericho to Jerusalem would have taken 3 times as long with a T-rex even in the best traffic.
You've got a way of thinking, which actually made me think.
T-Rex might be close to a bear's behavior (grizzly bear to be exact). Grizzly bear isn't the fastest, but is surely one of the bigger if not biggest in the forest. They do pick off big prey but they also take / scavenge food from other predators like wolfs.
It seems like there are some similarity between T-Rex and Grizzly bear.
Duh. Why would a T.Rex want to run fast? It would be far more dangerous for them than pretty much anything else - a single stumble will likely result in broken bones and death from starvation.
They just need a bit of help.
New research based on simulations that include the size of the wings show that bumbleebees would have a hard time flying at all without bones breaking.
I really would like to see the same scientists prove their theory and run away from a living t-rex pursuing them...
Sure, but you'd end up running right into the trap set by the other T. Rexs.
"Marathon runners can average 8.8mph for 26.2 miles" (from google)
Turtles < Normal Person < Marathon runners
0.2mph < Normal Person < 8.8mph
11mph < T-Rex < 15mph
We're still screwed aren't we?
T-rex are like humans. Humans don't hunt their prey by being fast. But simply by being able to keep up their speed longer than their prey. A human can easily run down a horse, which will get very slow after being chased for a few hours. T-rex did apply the same strategy.
So is the calculated running speed a sprint, or something a bit more like an endurance effort?
I mean, I'm sure many of us could outrun a t-rex. For about 30 seconds, at which point our lungs will start imploding and rexy gets an easy, wheezy meal.
I'm really not convinced by these arguments that our ancestors were somehow multi marathon fit and could run down anything on the plain. No native peoples today do that - they wound first with spears or arrows then follow it until it dies, they don't wear it down physically!
As for running down a horse, you must be joking. Horses can gallop then trot for hours, long after even the fittest marathon runner would be in a sweaty heap on the ground panting like dog. And unless you're a first class tracker you're never going to find that horse that has probably put 10 miles between you and him in the first hour.
OK, I am a trained physicist and use SI all the time, but I'd never use it for specifying land speed. How out of touch with the world can you be to give mph (which, seriously, you should switch from at some point) and m/s as an alternative?
Do you really think a 4 ton predator would be able to maintain a high pace without likewise having a heart attack? That's a fuckton of energy for any animal to expend for a length of time
That I can walk faster than a walking T-Rex. Outrunning a running T-Rex might be more problematic.
Then apply it to Dinosaurs.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
First of all, it is extremely poor reasoning to assume that, if people are slower than T-Rex, all people die. That's just silly. A T-Rex cannot necessarily eat all people in its presence, and will likely end a pursuit upon the capture of a single human, having to stop to eat it.
Second, to assume that a human must necessarily run faster than a T-Rex to avoid capture is similarly stupid. A human need only run faster than another human.
Finally, why spend all the time studying T-Rex/Human interaction anyway? It's not as if Humans and T-Rex ever lived together.
Wait a second!!!! FIRST they tell us not to MOVE and T-rex cannot see us and NOW they tell us to RUN?!! These scientists don't know anything! Invent the time machine already and lets go find out for real!
Facto
Actually Randall Munroe is more worried about velociraptors.
How much money we will spend on ridiculous "research" like this!
Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
No, the Trex would just stand there and laugh while fat humans ran 50m and collapsed in a panting heap. It would then stroll over in a leisurely fashion.
That we find there would have been a shitload of vegetation back in those days. Running is hard when there is ferns and shit in the way.
We will have to reboot the Jurassic park series!
Why should that matter if their heart & lungs scale to the necessary size? By your logic, we should be able to outpace horses.
I recall reading an article in Scientific American some 30 years ago that said said pretty much the same thing about T. Rex.
Well, the article is about dinosaurs...
I would leave the carcass of any animal that had been run to death, too. It's definitely not going to taste great after that.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
is it an African or European T.Rex?
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"...then meters per seconds. Totally useless units in such an article if youâ(TM)re not from the US of A.
Then don't come to a US hosted site and whine about the use of our standards. Even if they are stupid...which I'll agree to.
Just another day in Paradise
When you consider the number of people that think humans and dinosaurs co-existed, I wish this educational opportunity had not been squandered.
A lot of prey is faster than the hunter. Canines and most felines will in many cases simply outlast their prey before taking it over. It's probably why humans survived so long, because we developed stamina. Humans can run and hide for outstanding amounts of time whether that is hunting or being hunted.
Predators in the wild need to account for energy spent vs energy gained as well as the danger of the prey having enough stamina to fight back when the hunt is over, predators will tend to give up soon if the prey isn't losing energy fast enough.
The question is not necessarily how fast they ran but how long they could run for. Since the T-Rex is an overgrown chicken, I believe it could very well have ran for quite some time because birds are very well adapted to conserve energy.
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The article forgets that it would've been easier for T-Rex to run faster on the Earth of prehistoric times because of the lower force of gravity.
Isn't there a chance that when T rex existed, gravity may have been less, so his weight wouldn't be what we are measuring it at?
The fossil record indicates that humans and T-rex didn't exist during the same time period....
tracks are not recorded in firm ground. 18mph in foot-deep mud is way better than a human is going to accomplish.
Well, your mother rode a T-rex sidesaddle!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Student took this photo of a bear just before it killed him
A Rutgers student who was killed by a bear while hiking in New Jersey snapped photos of the 300-pound beast before it chased him, mauled him — and even gouged the phone the victim used to take his last pics.
Darsh Patel was walking with four friends through the Apshawa Preserve in West Milford in September when the black bear attacked. ...
I can't find pics of the victim with is friends anymore online, but let's put it this way: it'd be easy to pick out the slow one.
Or course, stopping to take pictures didn't help...
And 8 ton elephant can do 40km/h (25mph) (http://www.speedofanimals.com/animals/elephant), and they can travel far distances at a relatively fast pace (compared to humans), so yes, I think a 4 ton predator could maintain a high enough pace to overtake a human without having a heart attack (elephants sure can: https://www.quora.com/Can-an-e...)
T.rex may not have been able to "run", but it could walk at about 12mph (according to this study). While the fastest man alive can sprint at just over 25mph, he won't be maintaining that speed for very long, and T.rex can cover some serious distance with those huge strides. It's also silly to reference Usain Bolt... T.rex would only need to catch slow to average speed people (if we had even been around then), and my money would still be on T.rex to win those races.
Huh? Even at 10 miles an hour that's a 6 minute mile. As long as T-Rex had some endurance, many non-atheltic types would get eaten for sure.
"So to outrun a T. rex, many animals -- or fictional humans -- would still have to run like hell."
No problem. I can say with a fairly high degree of certainty that if I am running from a T-Rex then I will, in fact, be running like hell.
Jesus couldn't have rode around on one if he couldn't catch it.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jesus+rides+dinosaur&t=peppermint&iax=1&ia=images
Now I can sleep at night
...I just need to outrun you.
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
Duh.. Will and Holly could've told you that.
I was under the impression that young T-Rex where fast and feathered. They would herd prey into there older/larger siblings. This was based on some research that showed a T-Rex life cycle included an unusually large amount of time with a juvenile body. It also showed that they lived in groups - something that does not cater to a scavenging lifestyle.
Wait, this was for an Albertosaurus. But the T-Rex was very similar and likely had a similar lifestyle.
If there were humans existing and living with T-Rex then the T-Rex would have been food, not the other way around. Humans may not be the top speed runners but they are the endurance champions. There is no animal on Earth that can outrun a human over long distances. That combined with intelligence, yeah, T-Rex is barbeque.
First off -- there are a LOT of structural assumptions going into this - we really don't know what dino-meat was like, nor what supporting ligaments, etc. is. You can't extrapolate a whale from a salmon.
Secondly, note that there is about 8-10 M of animal just sticking over the legs -- the Tyrannosaur can gain on its prey just by launching from a crouch.
Also, the fact that it can step and see over obstacles that other animals may have to run around means it can be effectively faster in the hunt on broken ground.
Lastly, its unlikely that a hunter of that stature would want to outrun a tiny prey -- the meat would barely be worth the effort unless it could run down a whole herd. If it did want to put out tiny prey, it could potentially "Peck from above" like a bird hunting bugs.
I believe I could sprint, briefly of course, at the 20 mph figure quoted for Olympic athletes.
This would be achieved by rocket power, as the entire contents of my bowels would be geysering out of my pants!
Modern humans are one thing, but we were the running champions. Being undisputed masters of shedding heat and sweating led to obscenely long stalking capability. We specced for upper body strength to add points in Throw, to deliver infected wounds, then chased and harassed scared, stressed out things, haunted them day and night, in our monkeysocial packs that can navigate any terrain and run forever. We were horror movie serial killers. I'm just now adding a new thought: Maybe we captured prey live, broke its limbs and such, and dragged prizes home as they looked on in terror.
But if you're asking ME to run 30 seconds I will probably disappoint you.
The calculated runspeed is based on the believed gait and bone structure. It's a maximum speed limit the beastie can reach without risking collapse. While this doesn't take the Rex's strength into account, the strength (and therefore the speed) should be within the tolerances of its bones. Creatures who regularly break their own legs when chasing prey don't tend to pass on their genes to the next generation.
Humans are built for endurance, not for the sprint. Some humans could sprint faster than the T-Rex's theoretical top speed but most couldn't. And even if a human could outsprint a rex, there's no reason to believe the Rex didn't have the stamina to keep up a pursuit a lot longer than a human can sprint.
learn to find Mars
Well okay if there's a T-Rex on my ass, maybe I'd find the energy.
> The fossil record indicates that humans and T-rex didn't exist during the same time period....
TFA indicates that no one said they did.
It seems we understand all too well the relationship between small hands and certain primal traits be they reptilian of mammalian. Given two politicos, who could run faster the one with the small hands or the one that can hold a basketball with one? You guys have 3.5 years left to solve this one and never ever make the mistake of choosing anyone with small hands again...