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Article: Digital dinos get real.(use of computer program to help recreate dinosaurs' appearance and behavior)(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- U.S. News & World Report
- Article date:
- April 30, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 All rights reserved. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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There are about 250 bones stamping around inside paleontologist Ralph Chapman's computer. They belong to an 18-foot-long horned dinosaur that had been taken apart by a museum. On Chapman's screen, the bones have been pieced together to form a moving, skeletal triceratops: Bone-white limbs stride below fleshless hips, shoulders, and skull.
But not directly below the shoulders. As Chapman, a paleontologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., points out, the forelimbs are splayed out to the sides a bit. For years, triceratops reconstructions had the limbs right under the body, like a rhino ready to charge. But when the limbs were digitally scanned in ...