The Raptor Charger gives Riley the ability to morph into the Green Ranger and summon the Raptor Zord. The Stego Charger gives Koda the ability to morph into the Blue Ranger and summon the Stego Zord. The Para Charger gives Chase the ability to morph into the Black Ranger and summon the Para Zord. The T-Rex Charger gives Tyler the ability to morph into the Red Ranger and summon the T-Rex Zord. "If you were walking an adult, you'd be jogging.Powered by the Ancient Energems, the Dino Chargers provide power and unlocking capabilities for morphing, arsenal, personal weapons and Zords when inserted into the Dino Charge Morpher! rex, you'd be comfortable at a brisk walk," he says. That's still a speed that a halfway decent amateur runner could beat. One previous study of a single footprint of a large tyrannosaur suggests that the beast could have been traveling as fast as 11 kilometers per hour (6.8 miles per hour), says Eric Snively, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse. McCrea agrees: "There are as yet no known trackways of running tyrannosaurs, so we don't know for sure just what their upper speed limit was." ![]() ![]() Moreover, he notes, the types of sediment that are good for preserving footprints are typically wet and sloppy, not the best surface on which a dinosaur could run full speed. Because trackways are records of single events-one walk along a lakeshore, for example-the odds are that any particular set of footprints doesn't capture a dinosaur's peak performance, says Thomas Holtz Jr., a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Maryland, College Park. The team's findings "are on par for what little data we have for tyrannosaurs," says Richard McCrea, a paleontologist at the Peace Region Paleontology Research Centre in Tumbler Ridge, Canada. Then, they measured the distance between the footprints and used an equation based on observations of living, walking bipeds to estimate the dinosaur's walking speed, yielding a result between 4.5 and 8 kilometers per hour (2.8 to 5 miles per hour), they report online this month and in a forthcoming print issue of Cretaceous Research. Using two common formulas, they determined the creature's hips were likely somewhere between 1.56 and 2.07 meters off the ground. To figure out just how fast it was moving, Persons and his team first estimated how high the dinosaur's hips must have been above the ground, based on the length of the footprint. Whatever species made the track, the calculations reveal that the creature had a "brisk walking speed," Persons says. The other possibility, says Persons, is a smaller theropod called Nanotyrannus lancensis, which some paleontologists suggest is merely an immature T. rex, it probably would have been an adolescent. The only theropods known to have lived in the region at the time-and large enough to have created the 47-centimeter-wide track-were tyrannosaurs. This arrangement marks its maker as a meat-eating theropod dinosaur, Persons says. The first footprint is well preserved, with three toes facing forward and one short, thumblike toe facing rearward. ![]() Even rarer sets of footprints, or trackways, can reveal more, says Persons, as the spacing and arrangement of individual footprints can provide insights into dinosaur gaits and walking speeds.Ĭontaining three footprints, the new trackway was found in 66-million-year-old rocks that formed along an ancient shoreline in what is now Wyoming. Well-preserved individual tracks can be used to help identify the size and type of dinosaur that created the imprint. According to the new estimate, T y rannosaurus rex may have ambled as quickly as 8 kilometers per hour (5 miles per hour), slower than a plodding amateur marathon runner or even a middle-aged power walker.įossilized tyrannosaur tracks are rare, even in areas where their skeletal fossils are abundant, says Scott Persons, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Alberta, Edmonton in Canada, and lead author of the new study. A rare set of tyrannosaur footprints is giving researchers insight into the walking speed of the prehistoric beasts, and it's possible that humans might have been able to outrun them.
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