No human being never had to run in front of a dinosaur hungry. Fortunately. But suppose that situation had occurred. Would we have had it easy to escape? The logical thing is to think that yes. After all, moving those big bodies shouldn’t be easy. Although not all were that big. Be that as it may, until now it was thought that yes, generally these animals were much slower than us. However, some fossil footprints found in Spain They have put on the table the data of the fastest dinosaur discovered so far. And yes, with that we would have had much more raw to escape.
The study in question, led by Pablo Navarro Lorbés, from the University of La Rioja, has just been published in Scientific Reports. In it, the tracks of two dinosaurs found in the Riojan town of Igea.
One of them was not particularly fast. The other, at the estimated speed he could go when he left the tracks, would only have been surpassed in the race by a human being. Usain bolt. And by the hair.
What do fossil footprints tell us?
Not all fossils originate from the remains of a living being. They can also be a result of your activity. These are what are known as traces and, among them, are precisely the fossil footprints.
They can give us an idea about which animal left them and also about their way of walking. When analyzing their size, their angle and the distance between themBy having a rough idea of the species that left them, we can know more or less how fast it was moving.
With dinosaurs it is somewhat more complicated than with other extinct animals, since we do not have relatives close bipeds with which it is easy to compare. Could serve flightless birdsBut they have very different body designs and diets, which make it difficult to establish common ground. Still, some calculations can be done to get approximate figures. The problem is that most of the fossil tracks that have been found were imprinted while the animal was walking. It is logical, we all spend more time walking than running. Thus, it becomes very difficult to know which was the fastest dinosaur.
But this time there was luck, because it seems that the two dinosaurs that left Igea’s footprints were running.
The dinosaur almost faster than Usain Bolt
The fossil footprints found in Igea correspond to two dinosaurs of the same species. It is not clear what it is, although it is suspected that it could be animals of the families of spinosaurids or carcharodontosaurids.
They were at 30 meters away and, despite being of different species, they had different sizes, one being much larger than the other. The largest was possibly moving at a speed of 23.4-37.1 km / h.
According the biologist Mark Denny, of the Stanford University, the maximum average speed that human beings can reach would be 38.6 kilometers per hour in a 200-meter race.
That indicates that, with full use, a person could have outrun that dinosaur. At least faster than he was running at the time.
But things change with the second issue. In this case, the data collected from its fossil footprints indicate that it was able to reach the 31.7-44.6 kilometers per hour. That would make it the fastest dinosaur in the world if we compare it with previous records, found in Utah and Texas.
As for humans, it would also be faster than most mortals. But Usain bolt He is not just another mortal. The Jamaican athlete has his record in 44.72 km / h. It would exceed Denny’s calculated speed for humans and, just barely, the world’s fastest dinosaur as well.
But not so fast (pun intended). Usain Bolt reached this figure working hard for it. The dinosaur that left those fossil footprints would be running, perhaps chasing another animal or fleeing from a larger one. But it wouldn’t necessarily be at its highest speed. In fact, the data obtained from the other animal, the slowest one, indicates that it was accelerating, so it could be that after the last conserved track it reached a much higher speed.
As for the other, his last footprint indicates a sharp left turn, something complicated if he was at the limit of his faculties. Maybe he was working hard. Or maybe he could still give so much more. What is clear is that in a race against those great animals we would have had it very difficult to win. And in the melee and better we do not even bother to compare.