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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."
...are slower than they appear
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.
Two herbivore dinosaurs are grazing and talking about natural selection. Suddenly one of them freezes.
"Shit, a T-rex! He has seen us; we are dead!". He turns to the other, who meanwhile has started running on its chubby legs.
"Don't be sully", shouts the first "you can't outrun a T-rex"
"Sure", shouts the other accelerating still, "but I can certainly outrun you!"
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.
That explains the group of human foot prints and t-rex prints often found together in the mud.
One fast human gets away as the more slower humans got raptured mid stride.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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.
They just need a bit of help.
"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?
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?
That I can walk faster than a walking T-Rex. Outrunning a running T-Rex might be more problematic.
How did the first post get modded redundant?
Then apply it to Dinosaurs.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
They compare T. rex to humans so that we know what to expect when Dr. Clonem von Krazee extracts DNA from Cretaceous amber, and a transporter accident creates a horrible half-human, half-T.-rex, half-mosquito abomination.
Alternatively, because it's more engaging (or click-baity, if you like) to compare their computed top speed for a T. rex to a human rather than to something like the speeding limit in a mall parking lot. Which is more interesting, "humans could outrun T. rex" or "unlike you in a car, T. rex would struggle to break the speed limit... in a parking lot"?
Actually Randall Munroe is more worried about velociraptors.
Plot twist, the T-Rex's vision is motion based, so he can't really see the still one.
So he goes after and eats the one running.
How much money we will spend on ridiculous "research" like this!
Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
You must be new here. Didn't you check the Twit Filter box?
From what I've seen there is some evidence that T-Rex's were actually scavengers.
...and promptly crashes into a tree which, according to your assertion, he cannot see.
The wonders of "scientific" analysis. T Rex can't walk without crutches and bumblebees can't fly.
In maybe 50 or 100 years, genetic engineering will probably be able to produce not a T Rex, but a reptilian critter that looks a lot like one in a lot of ways and has similar musculature, skelatal characteristics ... and teeth. Anyone want to bet there won't be a few non-reptilian participants eaten at the first running of the pseudo-Rex's in Rapid City, SD in 2067?
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
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
Finally, why spend all the time studying T-Rex/Human interaction anyway? It's not as if Humans and T-Rex ever lived together.
It certainly isn't worth spending any funding on. But if you're examining the prints, and already have most of the other tools needed, it's just fun for the same reason Jurassic Park was fun to watch...get over it.
Just another day in Paradise
I really Wonder how one can mod the OP as "redundant"?!? If so, we could say all the words in the world are "redundant", since they're all part of the dictionnary. And everything one could say has been said, so what's the point of having comments, if they're all redundant in advance, event when it's the first one?
Citing an old joke is not redundant, if you're the first one who thought about it in the comments section...
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.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
It also explains the remains of the portable toilet at the same location
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 Twit Filter box?
You must be new here, the css/html is broken.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Well, your mother rode a T-rex sidesaddle!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
From what I've seen there is some evidence that T-Rex's were actually scavengers.
Ever own a dog?
Even a pet dog will eat anything.
Or how about a close T-Rex relative such as a chicken? What won't a chicken eat?
So yeah, a T-Rex would scavenge. Why not?
But guess what? We KNOW T-Rex was a PREDATOR:
Physical evidence of predatory behavior in Tyrannosaurus rex
Feeding strategies of the large theropod, Tyrannosaurus rex, either as a predator or a scavenger, have been a topic of debate previously compromised by lack of definitive physical evidence. Tooth drag and bone puncture marks have been documented on suggested prey items, but are often difficult to attribute to a specific theropod. Further, postmortem damage cannot be distinguished from intravital occurrences, unless evidence of healing is present. Here we report definitive evidence of predation by T. rex: a tooth crown embedded in a hadrosaurid caudal centrum, surrounded by healed bone growth. This indicates that the prey escaped and lived for some time after the injury, providing direct evidence of predatory behavior by T. rex.
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.
It's not clear that a T.Rex could run for hours...but at its walking pace you'd need to run.
Also, they're comparing the run of a T.Rex to the sprint of a human, but how far can you sprint? T.Rex had a quite long stride, so by the time it hits full speed it probably gone further than you could sprint.
That said, any of our ancestors who were around at the time would be about the size of shrews, and not worth T.Rex even bending over for. So the question would be more "But how fast could a hadrosaur run?".
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
...and promptly crashes into a tree which, according to your assertion, he cannot see.
He can see the tree, he's just not distinguishing the frozen prey from the other background.
My guess is it'd be pretty close to the San Diego scene in Jurassic Park 2, replete with running Japanese businessmen.
"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.
I believe that oil is more from bacterial decomposition. Plants turned into coal instead. (OTOH, any decent coal was made longer ago than T.Rex was around. But maybe lignite.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
...I just need to outrun you.
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
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.
lolol the perot museum in dallas is going to have to update their basement exhibit where you race various things including a trex by running down a long screen.
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.
Ever seen chickens hunt bugs? Imagine you're the bug.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
...and promptly crashes into a tree which, according to your assertion, he cannot see.
I've stood beside a T Rex skeleton. If he crashes into a tree, that would be like me crashing into an artificial Christmas tree, the little one that stands on a table.
But that being said, people could outrun the T Rex for sure, because it would take one step for Usain Bolt's ten running steps so it wouldn't even be running. It would just kind of lean over, and inhale like I would over a plate of spaghetti. I'm pretty sure I would be about the right size for its dental floss.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.