Palaeontologist: Dinosaur Footprints – Biomechanics – Simulation
In 2014, colleagues and I published a photogrammetric reconstruction of the Paluxy River dinosaur ‘chase sequence,’ as generated from photographs taken before and during its excavation in 1940. (Blog post here). Photogrammetry has become pretty common now; commercial and open source programs are widely being used by all kinds of people, including palaeontologists, and there are... Continue Reading →
A couple of years ago, I was part of a group that published a method on calculating body mass in extinct animals from laser scans of their skeletons. The method involves separating the model into parts, and then using the qhull command to produce a volume that encloses the segment as tightly as possible. This... Continue Reading →
Digitization is no longer just a novelty – it is absolutely vital to good analysis and communication of data, and it’s so easy more people should be using it. Most people reading this blog will probably know what photogrammetry is, and it’s not my aim here to discuss the method per se. Suffice to say... Continue Reading →
Well, when I say 'tracks', I really mean 'track.' I've uploaded the Tyrannosaurid track that was described by Manning, Ott, and Falkingham in 2008. This model has actually been available for a while on ResearchGate, but now it's getting uploaded and assigned a DOI. Now's as good a time as any to upload this given... Continue Reading →
Those of you visiting the site may have noticed a new menu option up top there; 'Resources'. This is where I'm going to organise and make available data. For now, I'm making a selection of modern tracks available that include mammals, birds, and invertebrates. Such as this Goose footprint and metatarsus impression: Dinosaur tracks... Continue Reading →
Fossil Swimming Hippo TracksThis paper isn't quite out yet, but it's showing in google scholar, so I guess it's worth putting up on my [non-promoted] blog. Matthew Bennett, at the University of Bournemouth led on this one, in which we describe possible hippo swim tracks from the Koobi Fora footprint site in Kenya (site of ancient... Continue Reading →
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jWNb8QxPb4 This is probably my favorite video made by the press, describing the research my colleagues and I recently published in PLOS ONE. In 1941, Roland T. Bird excavated a large section of trackway, in which a large theropod and sauropod appeared to be moving in the same direction at about the same time. When... Continue Reading →
Prof. Peter L. Falkingham 