Skipping with Dinosaurs.....

The main dinosaur movement that is of interest to paleontologists is locomotion, primarily running ability.  One thing that we are very interested in at Manchester is….maximum running speed.  This is especially important for both predator and prey. One trying to avoid becoming lunch and the other trying to catch lunch.

The methods available to biologists when studying modern species, such as cinematography, video recording, measurements of energy consumption, force and pressure plate studies, are not easily applied to the extinct species, unless time travel is miraculously invented!

One avenue of research that the Manchester group has focused on is the relative running abilities of different groups of dinosaurs. We particularly focused upon the challenge of determining, if possible, the top running speeds of various dinosaur genera. This work has been led by Dr Bill Sellers, who works in the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Manchester.

Both Bill and I had a fun day explaining to Apple Inc. about our research into dinosaur locomotion, amongst other things. We both use Apple computers for the work that we do at Manchester. Here is a short video that might give you a little more insight to what we do at Manchester.