Science
Related: About this forumLeaping lizards! Jurassic Park got it right
Velociraptor adjusted the angle of its tail to stay stable when jumping.
High-speed video footage of leaping lizards supports a 40-year-old hypothesis1 about how theropod dinosaurs, such as the velociraptors of Jurassic Park fame, used their tails to stay stable while bounding around. The finding could be used to inform the design of more agile search-and-rescue robots.
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, filmed red-headed agama lizards (Agama agama) running down a track and vaulting off an obstacle to reach a shelter on a high platform. When the obstacle's surface was made slippery, the lizards skidded and jumped at the wrong angle. But by lifting their tails up or down, the lizards could adjust the tilt of their bodies, and thus land successfully.
Using these observations, the researchers made a computer model of Velociraptor mongoliensis and showed that, muscles willing, the dinosaur could have used its tail in a similar way, maybe even more effectively than the lizard, says study leader Robert Full, a biomechanic at Berkeley. The study is published online today in Nature2.
video at link
http://www.nature.com/news/leaping-lizards-jurassic-park-got-it-right-1.9736
Scuba
(53,475 posts)Warpy
(111,241 posts)Despite their reputation for gracefulness, most cat owners can tell you their cats are clods who under or overestimate distances all the time. That's when the tail comes in. The same can be said for squirrels. Sometimes they hop from branch to branch just fine, the rest of the time that tail is angled strangely and the landing is a little less than graceful, letting us know they goofed.
Dead_Parrot
(14,478 posts)muriel_volestrangler
(101,300 posts)They supersized it in the movie, to make it scarier.
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)Spielberg got his info on dinosaurs from Robert Bakker, and Bakker is a taxonomic lumper, he lumps Deinonychus within the genus Velociraptor.
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)Would have shifted the tone of the movie...
jmowreader
(50,553 posts)The most vicious dinos in the whole series were the compys--they were the size of chickens, but they attacked and ate humans?