Nature & Environment
World’s Largest Dinosaur Digitally Reconstructed By Experts [VIDEO]
Benita Matilda
First Posted: Oct 31, 2013 08:02 AM EDT
One of the world's largest dinosaurs to ever roam on Earth is now taking its first steps in over 94 million years.
Experts at the University of Manchester have digitally reconstructed the world's largest dinosaur 'Agrentinosaurus'- that lived during the late Cretaceous Epoch on the present-day South America.
Experts from Manchester along with scientists in Argentina successfully laser-scanned the 40-metre- long dinosaur and later used advanced computer modelling technique, equivalent of the 30,000 desktop computers, to recreate its running and walking movements. The experts also tested its locomotion ability for the first time.
This study offers the first virtual trackway of the dinosaur and contradicts the previous finding that state the animal had a bulky body and could not walk due the huge size.
"If you want to work out how dinosaurs walked, the best approach is computer simulation. This is the only way of bringing together all the different strands of information we have on this dinosaur, so we can reconstruct how it once moved," Dr Bill Sellers, lead researcher on the project from the University's Faculty of Life Sciences said in a press statement.
This new finds claims that the Argentinosaurus was capable of wandering across the Cretaceous planes of South America. The dino weighed 80 tonnes and was able to walk at the speed of 8 km/h.
Dr Phil Manning, from Manchester who contributed to the paper said, "It is frustrating there was so little of the original dinosaur fossilized, making any reconstruction difficult. The digitization of such vast dinosaur skeletons using laser scanners brings Walking with Dinosaurs to life...this is science not just animation."
It is impossible to find a copy of a modern resembling these large creatures, so the learning system was based on the data available of dinosaurs and this was used in producing the best possible moving patterns. This research is useful for understanding the musculoskeletal systems as well as developing robots in future.
Dr Sellars concluded, "All vertebrates from humans to fish share the same basic muscles, bones and joints. To understand how these function we can compare how they are used in different animals, and the most interesting are often those at extremes. Argentinosaurus is the biggest animal that ever walked on the surface of the earth and understanding how it did this will tell us a lot about the maximum performance of the vertebrate musculoskeletal system. We need to know more about this to help understand how it functions in ourselves."
The experts at Manchesters plan on using this technique to recreate the steps of other dinosaurs such as the T.Rex, Triceratops, and Brachiosaurus.
The details of this finding are published in the journal PLOS ONE.
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First Posted: Oct 31, 2013 08:02 AM EDT
One of the world's largest dinosaurs to ever roam on Earth is now taking its first steps in over 94 million years.
Experts at the University of Manchester have digitally reconstructed the world's largest dinosaur 'Agrentinosaurus'- that lived during the late Cretaceous Epoch on the present-day South America.
Experts from Manchester along with scientists in Argentina successfully laser-scanned the 40-metre- long dinosaur and later used advanced computer modelling technique, equivalent of the 30,000 desktop computers, to recreate its running and walking movements. The experts also tested its locomotion ability for the first time.
This study offers the first virtual trackway of the dinosaur and contradicts the previous finding that state the animal had a bulky body and could not walk due the huge size.
"If you want to work out how dinosaurs walked, the best approach is computer simulation. This is the only way of bringing together all the different strands of information we have on this dinosaur, so we can reconstruct how it once moved," Dr Bill Sellers, lead researcher on the project from the University's Faculty of Life Sciences said in a press statement.
This new finds claims that the Argentinosaurus was capable of wandering across the Cretaceous planes of South America. The dino weighed 80 tonnes and was able to walk at the speed of 8 km/h.
Dr Phil Manning, from Manchester who contributed to the paper said, "It is frustrating there was so little of the original dinosaur fossilized, making any reconstruction difficult. The digitization of such vast dinosaur skeletons using laser scanners brings Walking with Dinosaurs to life...this is science not just animation."
It is impossible to find a copy of a modern resembling these large creatures, so the learning system was based on the data available of dinosaurs and this was used in producing the best possible moving patterns. This research is useful for understanding the musculoskeletal systems as well as developing robots in future.
Dr Sellars concluded, "All vertebrates from humans to fish share the same basic muscles, bones and joints. To understand how these function we can compare how they are used in different animals, and the most interesting are often those at extremes. Argentinosaurus is the biggest animal that ever walked on the surface of the earth and understanding how it did this will tell us a lot about the maximum performance of the vertebrate musculoskeletal system. We need to know more about this to help understand how it functions in ourselves."
The experts at Manchesters plan on using this technique to recreate the steps of other dinosaurs such as the T.Rex, Triceratops, and Brachiosaurus.
The details of this finding are published in the journal PLOS ONE.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone