Yahoo News Jurassic Park was wrong – you CAN outrun a T-Rex
One of the more iconic scenes from the original Jurassic Park was the car-chase scene, where an angry T Rex chases a panicked group of scientists.
The trio attempts to outrun the dino in their Jeep but struggles – until Sam Neill's Alan Grant finally shifts into high gear and leaves the T Rex in the dust.
This scene is not, shall we say, scientifically accurate. According to new research from Manchester University, a Jeep could easily outrun a T Rex – and so could a person running quite fast.
It's tough to say exactly how fast the T Rex could run, considering there are no living test subjects. But previous studies have estimated the size of the animal's muscles as a way to gauge its speed.
These studies have produced a wide range of estimates, from around 15mph up to 40mph.
But according to the research from Manchester, all of those speeds are too fast. The Manchester researchers looked not at T Rex's muscle mass, but at its bone strength, and found that if ran anywhere near those speeds its leg bones would snap in half. Instead, the team puts the top speed of a T Rex at around 12 mph.
For comparison, that's an attainable sprinting speed for a human being, though if you have the misfortune of being out of shape when a T Rex starts chasing you, you'll probably be lunch. The fastest runners in the world can reach more than 20mph, more than enough to outpace the most famous of the dinosaurs.
This discovery is thanks to a new simulation method that combines traditional muscle data with skeletal stress data to create a clearer picture of what dinosaur movement looks like.
This is the first time this analysis has been done and the results are promising, which means further research of this kind on different species could radically change our view of how dinosaurs got around.
What more Jurassic Park lore is at stake?
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