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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."
If running from a T-Rex was an actual concern, I would venture most people would be fit enough to pull it off.
This post is both everything right and wrong with science commentary today. Everything you posted is completely correct, and you've done a very good job explaining how to critically think about the assumptions and approximations inherent to an analysis. But...
What is your proposed way to more accurately measure how fast a T-Rex can run?
This is the best effort, to date, to reasonably and scientifically arrive at an estimate. If you have a better idea, do it! That's how the field of science improves - someone does the best job they can, it pushes others to improve their method or develop orthogonal methods to measure or understand, and ultimately we achieve improved understanding. But while sitting in a chair nit-picking someone else's work is very easy, unless you then follow that up with an improved method, you're basically saying "here's why this estimate could be wrong, so we should throw it out and go back to our previous estimate of 'who the hell knows'". That's not a useful commentary.
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.
Most things about dinosaurs need to be taken with a very large pinch of salt, because you're often extrapolating entire species from under half a dozen samples of skeletons. The problem is in the translation from the scientific paper to the mainstream news. The first will list all of the caveats and the limits of their model (or be published somewhere crap and ignored by most researchers), the latter will present it as truth.
One of the big problems for our society is that we often teach science as a religion with a set of facts, rather than as a process. When the facts are shown to be incorrect, people lose faith in science, rather than seeing an example of science working precisely as the process is meant to work.
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Marathon runners run quite slowly, because they have to keep going for hours. This is how primitive humans caught their prey: not by being faster, but by having a lot more stamina and keeping catching up and forcing the prey to spring until it reached exhaustion. Most humans can run for short periods a lot faster than they can jog a marathon. That said, 15mph is a 4 minute mile, which under a thousand humans have ever done, so if the T. Rex doesn't give up after about 30 seconds then you're probably going to become eaten.
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