Digital Trends looks up in awe at the lumbering, prehistoric majesty of the mighty Argentinasaurus (virtual, 2.0 edition) taking its first steps:
When a group of scientists claimed the size of the world’s biggest dinosaur must have been exaggerated as such a huge creature would never have been able to walk, a research team at the UK’s Manchester University decided to look at the matter more closely.
Using laser-scanning techniques and an advanced computer modeling system, the team was able to accurately recreate Argentinosaurus’s locomotion ability, as well as its walking and running movements, backing up the theory that the dinosaur was indeed 40 meters long and weighed as much as 80 tons.
…
[Dr. Bill] Sellers added, “Argentinosaurus is the biggest animal that ever walked on the surface of the Earth and understanding how it did this will tell us a lot about the maximum performance of the vertebrate musculoskeletal system. We need to know more about this to help understand how it functions in ourselves.
“Similarly if we want to build better-legged robots then we need to know more about the mechanics of legs in a whole range of animals and nothing has bigger, more powerful legs than Argentinosaurus.”
And here, for your viewing pleasure, is how the giant walked, 94 million years ago: