• MoonMelon@lemmy.ml
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    3 days ago

    The study of this is called allometry, and if you know the bone lengths of a creature you can generalize the formula to figure out when that animal will change from any one gait to another (like trot, canter, gallop, etc). This was used on Jurassic Park to figure out when the T-Rex would run (although I believe they ended up fudging it for coolness factor).

    • tunetardis@lemmy.ca
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      3 days ago

      I once had a dream featuring a T-Rex hopping like a kangaroo and woke up thinking wait, how would we know they didn’t do that? I guess this answers my question.

      • moody@lemmings.world
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        3 days ago

        They can tell from the bones where the muscles attached, and what movements they made. They could piece together an animal’s walking gait just from that.

        Looking only at a dead person’s bones, one could deduce what sports they practiced, for example.