THE T-REX ran faster than previously believed and probably would have beaten Usain Bolt in a 100m sprint, a shock new study reveals.
It all comes down to new findings about the way this lethal dinosaur raced across Earth to catch prey 69million years ago.
Despite what you see in movies like Jurassic Park, the Tyrannosaurus rex did not stomp.
Until now, it was widely assumed that the mighty creature’s heels struck the ground first as it walked.
But it turns out the T-rex actually tip-toed, according to research led by the College of the Atlantic in Maine.
Taking a toe-first approach would have allowed the predator to move up to 20 per cent faster than we had previously believed.
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Such a running style is more like how a bird or a human starts a run.
The study – published in the Royal Society Open Science journal – found that the feared predator took shorter steps but it did more of them which enabled it to dash much faster.
An analysis reveals that a small T-rex weighing just 1.4 tonnes could run at a maximum of 11.4 metres per second, which is the equivalent of 24.6 miles per hour.
In a 100m sprint, this would allow the beast to complete the race in 8.77 seconds – 0.81 seconds faster than Usain Bolt’s 9.58 seconds world record.
However, a bigger T-rex is still no match for the world’s fastest man.
Scientists studied one weighing 6.5 tonnes that they worked out would move at 9.5 metres per second, clocking in 10.52 seconds for a 100m sprint.
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But that’s still only 0.03 seconds short of Florence Griffith Joyner’s women’s world record.
Walking on tiptoes also provided an advantage for how the T-rex handled its weight.
The predator dashed with a crouched posture, taking many quick steps to keep itself stable.
Doing so allowed the legs to act as shock absorbers on pretty tough ground.
Researchers behind the study say movie makers may now have to rethink how they portray the T-rex on the big screen going forward.
“Our study represents, to our knowledge, the first quantitative biomechanical analysis of the effects of foot-strike patterns on the gait of Tyrannosaurus,” they said.
Why did dinosaurs die out?
Here’s what you need to know…
- The dinosaur wipe-out was a sudden mass extinction event on Earth
- It wiped out roughly three-quarters of our planet’s plant and animal species around 66million years ago
- This event marked the end of the Cretaceous period, and opened the Cenozoic Era, which we’re still in today
- Scientists generally believe that a massive comet or asteroid around 9 miles wide crashed into Earth, devastating the planet
- This impact is said to have sparked a lingering “impact winter”, severely harming plant life and the food chain that relied on it
- More recent research suggests that this impact “ignited” major volcanic activity, which also led to the wiping-out of life
- Some research has suggested that dinosaur numbers were already declining due to climate changes at the time
- But a study published in March 2019 claims that dinosaurs were likely “thriving” before the extinction event