Tropes

Popsci_2014 01304.txt

#Chickens Wear Prosthetic Dinosaur Tails, For Sciencethe humble chicken is distantly related to the T. rex. This raises an important scientific question: How could we make chickens walk like they're little dinosaurs? A new study provides the equally important answer! And also video! Researchers from the Universidad de Chile wanted to study dinosaur strutting but there being few dinosaurs available stuck a prosthetic tail on the creatures'fowl analog raising them from birth to adapt for walking in a more dinosaur-like way. As you can see from this video the chicken was made successfully to walk like a doofus. These results indicate a shift from the standard bird knee-driven bipedal locomotion to a more hip-driven locomotion typical of crocodilians (the only other extant archosaur group) mammals and hypothetically bipedal non-avian dinosaurs the researchers write in the study. So although we don't quite have any dinosaurs to double check the scientists are pretty sure this is a fair representation of how dinos strolled. One step closer to a Jurassic park petting zoo. Onward science. PLOS ONE via io9 E

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