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Dinosaur Locomotion

Beyond the bones

Nature volume 440, pages 292–294 (2006)Cite this article

How did dinosaurs stand and move? Computer simulation and other methods have told us much about how dinosaurs did and did not move, but they have not yet reached their full potential.

Ray Harryhausen, famous animator of creatures in such films as Jason and the Argonauts and The Valley of Gwangi, has written that “I found dinosaurs to be the ideal subject for stop-motion animation... The fact that nobody knew how those huge reptiles had moved or, for that matter, exactly how they looked meant that I could bring them alive without any fear of criticism”1. Harryhausen indeed showed that nothing brings an extinct animal to life more than seeing it move. But can walking and running dinosaurs be animated with scientific rigour rather than just artistic flair? Dinosaurs are excellent study organisms for researchers interested in such aspects of biomechanics as the repeated evolution of large size, shifts to and from bipedalism and quadrupedalism2,3, and changes in joint structure, musculature and behaviour4,5,6,7,8,9,10.

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Figure 1: Tyrannosaurus rex as an example of dinosaur anatomy and locomotion.
Figure 2: Locomotor cycle (stride) for Tyrannosaurus.
Figure 3: Mid-stance poses for the three sequences shown in Figure 2.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. the Department of Veterinary Basic Sciences, Structure and Motion Laboratory, The Royal Veterinary College, London, NW1 0TU, UK

    John R. Hutchinson

  2. the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Box G, Brown University, Providence, 02912, Rhode Island, USA

    Stephen M. Gatesy

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  1. John R. Hutchinson
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  2. Stephen M. Gatesy
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Hutchinson, J., Gatesy, S. Beyond the bones. Nature 440, 292–294 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/440292a

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