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Trackway analysis shows how dinosaurs coped with slippery slopes
Date:10/6/2009

ls to life in a way that their bones cannot, by providing a brief but vibrant record of a living, breathing animal as it moved through its environment," Wilson said. "While fossilized bones can provide a wealth of information about extinct animals' anatomy and physiology, inferences about their locomotion and behavior are necessarily indirect." Tracks, on the other hand, are a direct record of the animal's behavior.

The disadvantage, though, is that tracks preserve the impression of nothing more than the sole of the foot, rendering trackmaker identification an approximation. It is very difficult to identify species with such limited information.

"Suppose you ran down the beach with a group of friends and then tried to identify each person's footprints," Wilson said. "You might use characteristics like foot size and length and even the number of toes, if someone in the group happens to be missing one. We use similar indicators to figure out what we're looking at, and while we can't identify tracks down to the species level, we can distinguish major groups, such as plant-eating ornithischians and meat-eating theropods."

When they analyzed the tracks, the researchers determined that ornithischians changed their way of walking as surface conditions changed. In the river bed, they crouched low, adopted a sprawling four-legged stance, and crept along flat-footed, dragging their feet. On the slope, they narrowed their stance, still walking on all fours, but picking up their feet. Once they reached the flat, stable ground on top, they switched to walking on two legs.

In contrast, the theropod that crossed the surface didn't vary its posture or gait. Remaining upright on two legs, it used claws on its toes to grip slippery surfaces.

"The tracksite is a natural laboratory," said Smith. "We have a record of how different animals reacted to the same set of ground conditions."

The different walking styles also foreshadow ev
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Contact: Nancy Ross-Flanigan
rossflan@umich.edu
734-647-1853
University of Michigan
Source:Eurekalert

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