On Nov 18, 2010, at 6:07 PM, Jonas Weselake-George wrote:
Finally, we tend to imagine these animals moving on treadmills or
mud-flats. Many types of terrains may have had slopes, unpredictable
height variations (eg. throw mounds), as well as varied obstacles and
unpredictable consistency.
The strains and challenges for mobility, navigation and recovery in
such environments, along with unusually extended or compressed leg
postures may be much greater than we imagine.
We filmed some backplate in Redwood Forests in Northern CA for our T.rex episode on
Reign of the Dinosaurs. Making the assumption that the terrain in some T.rex
environments may have been the same given the presence on Metasequoia and Laurel forests
we've been having a heck of a time finding a "nice clear path" for the rexes to
walk/run, even in the most well-groomed forests. Given the fact that no one was cleaning
up millions of years of massive deadfall T.rex must have had to do some fancy footwork,
as well as ducking and crouching while ambulating through the forests at least some of
the time. Standing on slopes or even walking on them would require some constant
shifting of weight and balance.