I saw a video comparing a bunch of dinosaur speeds, but I can’t seem to find any logical explanation of how this was discovered? Is this even real?
I’m very confused and can’t seem to wrap my head around any of this. We have never SEEN dinosaurs in action and (to my knowledge) only discovered bones. So how does any of that add up?
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Well you’re right that we don’t really know. The field is called ‘biomechanics’ and basically involves making educated guesses about how an animal was likely to move, given the shape and size of the bones. Animals adapted to walking or running in a certain way will have foot and leg bones that fit that. And you can make some estimations based on the reconstructed size and muscle mass of the animal. But there are other factors to consider. For example if one animal is thought to have been an active predator, well, it’s got to at least be able to outrun its prey. Also, we have found footprints of some dinosaurs, and the placement of those prints relative to one another can give you an estimate of whether the animal was walking or running and its stride distance.
But yeah no it is an estimate and we don’t know for sure.
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