When Usain Bolt set the world record for the 100-meter dash, his speed topped out at about 44.25 kilometers per hour. Some of Tyrannosaurus rex’s formidable cousins that lived on the Iberian Peninsula 120 million years ago could sprint just as fast, finds an analysis of fossil footprints published Thursday (December 9) in Scientific Reports. The findings build on similar analyses of footprints from North America.
“The image that we have of dinosaurs 30 years ago or so is changing,” lead author Pablo Navarro-Lorbés of the University of La Rioja in Spain tells The Wall Street Journal. “In the past we thought that they were lumbering animals not well adapted to the environment. Now we see that some are perfectly adapted to hunting and running.”
According to the paper, the tracks—one 5 footprints long, and the other 7—were laid during the early Cretaceous period (145 million–100 million years ago) by ...
