'Fattysaurus' or 'thinnysaurus'? How dinosaurs measure up with las...(allowed calculation of body segment mass...)

Having created their 'best-guess' reconstruction of each animal, they then varied the volumes of body segments and respiratory organs to find the maximum plausible range of mass for the animals. Even scientists cannot be sure exactly how fat or thin animals like T. rex were in life, and the team were interested in exactly how broad the range of possible values were for body mass. They believe that the lower weight estimates are most likely to be correct as there is no good reason for the dinosaurs to weigh more than they need to as this would affect their speed, energy use and demands on the respiratory system.

The team also measured the body mass of an ostrich, as an existing subject that would show how accurate their technique was, and found the results to be correct.

They will now use the results to further investigate the locomotion of dinosaurs, specifically how they ran.

Karl said: "Our technique allows people to see and decide for themselves how fat or thin the dinosaurs might have been in life. You can see the skeleton with a belly. Anyone from a five-year-old to a Professor can see it and say, 'I think this reconstruction is too fat or too thin'.

He added: "This study will help us in our research on how dinosaurs ran in 3-D rather than 2-D as in previous studies.

"Reconstructing more dinosaurs in such detail will allow us to examine changes in body mass and particularly centre of mass as they evolved. As we know, dinosaurs evolved into birds. As they did so, the centre of mass moved forward and different walking styles evolved. Although the dinosaurs we have reconstructed are not very close relatives of the birds, we can nevertheless see a small forwards movement in the position of the centre of mass from Acrocanthosaurus atokensis to
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