T. rex takes a walk

Four footprints finally give an adult Tyrannosaurus rex a walking pace.

The trackway was found by a high school teacher. Kent Hups teaches earth science near Denver, and in 2025 he was walking the North Dakota Badlands when he noticed a row of unusually rounded sandstone boulders sitting along the edge of a steep gumbo butte. Because of the wonders (and disappointments) of modern technology, I've not personally seen the trackway in person. My co-authors were the ones that found and excavated it, but they also took high-resolution laser scans that they could send to me over in the UK. I was able to not only view this on my computer, but in VR, which is a pretty cool experience to be able to stand next to a 7 m T. rex trackway from halfway around the world.

My co-authors took measurements in the field, and I was able to take the same (and other) measurements from the digital model. It sounds silly, but fieldwork necessarily means time is limited, and you don't always measure everything that later turns out to be useful. The digital twin means we can consider things and take more measurements as needed. So, we could measure stride and foot length in the field with a tape measure, then we could more carefully consider later "ok, where exactly does the track start and end, and how does that affect the measurements."

That's relevant because these are not the most nicely preserved tracks I've ever seen — in fact they are pretty heavily weathered, so the edges are broken, rough, and can blend into the surrounding rock. It's therefore a hard call to know exactly where to measure.

Ongoing thread. More from Peter L. Falkingham to follow.