Guineafowl Helps Researchers Understand Dinosaur Movement
The Guineafowl has helped researchers develop a method to study movement of dinosaurs.
According to Tech Times, the chicken sized bird was made to trot through poppy seeds even as researchers captured images of its feet movement with x-rays. These images were then used to simulate the bird's foot movement on computer, which would help palaeontologists working with dinosaur imprints and fossils understand how ancient reptiles moved.
"By observing how a footprint is formed, from the moment the foot hits the sediment until it leaves, we can directly associate motions with features left behind in the track. We can then study a fossil track left by a dinosaur and say 'ok, these features of the track are similar, but these are different, so what does that mean for the way the animal was walking?" said Dr Peter Falkingham, research fellow RVC's structure and motion lab, in a news release.
Through the simulation exercise, researchers were able to peer down below the surface in slow motion to see how foot and sediment interacted to understand track creation and foot movement, Fox News reported.
Researchers choose Guineafowl as it is similar in size to a chicken-sized dinosaur whose strange tracks palaeontologists are trying to understand.
The dinosaur Corvipes lacertoideus, roamed 250 million years ago and created tracks in north-eastern US. The tracks contain strange marks which could not be accurately explained.
However the new study from Falkingham and co-author Professor Stephen Gatesy of Brown University has helped explain the mysterious track marks. By looking at the simulation and comparing it Corvipes lacertoideus's track marks, researchers concluded that the dinosaur was withdrawing its foot and the sediment was pulled upwards as its foot exited the sediment.
