How Dinosaurs Moved and Walked
We all know that some huge creatures ruled the earth many million years ago but have you ever wondered how dinosaurs moved and walked. It still has been a mystery. There are various possibilities like they could have moved from one place to another in flocks or alone.
It has been showed in a lot of recent researches that some dinosaurs have a lot of similarities with modern birds. This is also the reason why many scientists claim that dinosaurs are not completely extinct. Similar to birds, Theropod dinosaurs were bipedal and had three-toed feet and a wishbone. They had air-filled bones and some even had feathers.
Palaeontologists divided fossils in two basic categories which are body fossils and trace fossils. Body fossils can be defined as the body parts of an ancient animal like bones, eggs, feathers etc. Trace fossils can be defined as the remnant of some kind of activity by that animal like footprint, nest etc.
A sequence of preserved footprints can give a rough estimate to researchers about how and at which speed that dinosaur actually moved. These well-preserved fossilized footprints are known as track ways. Track ways of meat-eating Theropods are less common as compare to the ones which belonged to plant-eating Sauropods.
It has been proved in a recent study that n both, modern birds and Theropod dinosaurs the step width decreased gradually with the increasing speed.