this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2025
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Today I learned
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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).
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.
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.
I would have found it cooler if it was 100% accurate just like the black hole in Interstellar.
They fudged everything but the appearance of the black hole in that movie.
nope, they fudged that too
edit: they ignored the doppler effect