Testing the locomotor superiority hypothesis for early dinosaurs
National Biomechanics Day 2019
April 10th 2019, DAWNDINOS TEAM hosts ‘NIGHT AT THE VET COLLEGE!’
A great evening was had by all last Wednesday when the DAWNDINOS team hosted the ‘Night at the Vet College’ at RVC’s Camden Campus to celebrate National Biomechanics Day, held worldwide on 10th April.
Over 400 visitors enjoyed an evening of talks, demos, interactive stands and many other activities about Triassic-Jurassic palaeobiology. They learned about the dawn of the dinosaurs and found out how research scientists study life on earth over two hundred million years ago!
Prof John Hutchinson
Prof John Hutchinson introduced the evening by giving an overview of the DAWNDINOS project in his opening talk, ‘Were dinosaurs special? Old questions meet new tools.’ Further talks followed later from Dr Alex Dunhill, Lecturer in Palaeobiology at the University of Leeds on the mass extinctions and Professor Paul Barrett from the Natural History Museum on the humble origins that led to the dinosaur explosion.
Prof Hutchinson delivers his talk ‘Were dinosaurs special? Old questions meet new tools’ in the Great Hall at CamdenDr Krijn Michel talks to visitors about how we use living birds and crocodiles, X-ray videos and digital techniques to get dinosaurs moving again!Dino cakes show artistic reconstructions of the eleven study animals in the DAWNDINOS project. (Artwork courtesy of John Conway)Professor Friedl De Groote from KU Leuven, Belgium explains how muscle properties, gravity and load carrying, change the walking or running pattern of a computer model!Prof Paul Barrett from the NHM and Dr David Button (pictured) show visitors how 3D models of dinosaur skulls generated from CT scans and 3D prints of dinosaur skulls illustrate the early evolution of dinosaur feeding.Bones are all we have left for many fossil species. Dr Andrew Cuff shows they are full of information which we can use to reconstruct the animals and understand how they lived. Dr Peter Bishop explores how we use musculoskeletal models, the laws of physics, and mathematical optimization theory to simulate and reconstruct walking, running and other movements in dinosaurs.
‘Night at the Vet College’ at RVC’s Camden Campus to celebrate National Biomechanics Day, held worldwide on 10th April.
dawndinos.com 