Jurassic Park's most iconic scenes should have run a little slower, based on new research suggesting our favourite dinosaur, Tyrannosaurus rex, couldn't manage more than a walk.

Calculating the top speed of the tyrant lizard king seems to be an obsession for paleontologists, who have debated over the decades whether the giant predator was a sprinter or a stroller. It turns out that while T. rex could still take quick steps, any serious gait would leave it with more than just a bad case of shin splints.

The research, led by scientists from the University of Manchester in the UK, created a detailed computer model that used multi-body system dynamics – which looks at connected solid objects – to analyze the bends and twists applied to different parts of a skeleton.

Their model rex was based on a specimen dug up in 1987 called BHI 3033, also known as Stan to his pals.

CT scans of various fossils provided limits the team could work with to decide the kinds of forces bones could take before they were damaged.

Working out the mass of any dinosaur isn't without its challenges, but the researchers settled on a conservative 7206.7 kilograms (about 15,900 pounds) of meat and bone for their calculations.

From there it was a matter of determining the forces of impact bones would experience as the dinosaur built up speed, taking into account hypothetical soft tissues that could cushion the blow.

Speeds above 27.7 kilometers (17 miles) per hour would have pushed the limits on Stan's bones, which were estimated to have a yield strength of about 200 megapascals (29,000 psi).

For comparison, average human walking speed is around 4.8 km/h (3mph), jogging speed is around 8-9km/h (5-6mph), and Usain Bolt can run 100m in roughly 38km/h (23.7mph).

A more reasonable estimate on bone strength, according to the researchers, would be around half that 27.7 km/h at the upper limit, putting our buddy Stan in the ballpark of someone sprinting to catch a bus.

"Therefore, even if safety factors below the lower limit seen in living animals are allowed, our analysis demonstrates that T. rex was not mechanically capable of true running gaits," the researchers write in their report.

Estimates on an adult T. rex's maximum velocity have ranged in the past have looked at everything from body configurations and muscle attachments to their fossilized footprints, with estimates ranging from 18 km/h (11.2mph) to a very speedy 54km/h (33.6mph).

This research puts some constraints on those higher estimates, suggesting T. rexcould still take some quick steps with those long limbs, but couldn't break into a sprint that would chase down Jeff Goldblum in a jeep.

"Here we present a new approach that combines two separate biomechanical techniques to demonstrate that true running gaits would probably lead to unacceptably high skeletal loads in T. rex," says lead researcher William Sellers from the University of Manchester.

That means the big Tyrannosaur would never have been airborne as it leaped from foot to foot, keeping its speed down to a minimum.

A slower T. rex might make for less thrilling blockbusters, but it could help us understand how the dinosaur's hunting Behaviour shifted as it evolved.

Bigger predators can take down prey that would usually have size on their side, meaning high speed wouldn't need to be an issue.

But what of junior Tyrannosaur rex? Could they have been agile sprinters? The model suggests possibly not, but more research would be needed to validate the idea.

Although limited to T. rex in this study, there's no reason the same model couldn't be applied to any other long-extinct creature we're curious about.

"Tyrannosaurus rex is one of the largest bipedal animals to have ever evolved and walked the Earth," says Sellers.

"So it represents a useful model for understanding the biomechanics of other similar animals."

We still don't advocate trying to outrun a T.rex if ever given the opportunity, but it might help knowing if you get your running shoes on, Stan might not risk the leg pain.

This research was published in Peer J.

SEE ALSO: A dinosaur tooth discovered in Appalachia suggests big horned dinosaurs may have lived in the eastern US

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The dragons from Game of Thrones may be fictitious, but some of these real-life animals aren't so different. The closest were the pterosaurs, whose name literally translates to "winged lizard". There are a few other dragon-esque animals.

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• About 66 million years ago, a 9-kilometer-wide asteroid slammed into Earth, creating the Chicxulub crater and triggering the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event.
• Skies filled with soot and gas, firestorms covered the planet, and global temperatures plummeted, killing 75% of life on Earth, including the dinosaurs.
• But a new study found that the asteroid was that devastating only because of where it struck.

Some 66 million years ago, a city-size asteroid slammed into Earth near Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.

The massive impact created the 180-kilometer-wide Chicxulub crater and triggered the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event that wiped out 75% of Earth's biodiversity, including almost all the dinosaurs that had dominated life on land for more than 130 million years.

But that event was so devastating only because of the location the asteroid hit, a study published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports found. If it had hit elsewhere on Earth, the dinosaurs might have survived, the authors say.

The authors attribute the extinction event to the aftereffects of the impact. When the 9-kilometer-wide asteroid slammed into the planet, it caused earthquakes, triggered firestorms and massive tsunamis, and filled the air with gas and soot that caused drastic global cooling.

Another recent study found that the cooling event saw surface temperatures plummet an average of about 47 degrees Fahrenheit overnight and remain that way for years.

The new study found that the cooling event was so severe because the asteroid struck a particularly hydrocarbon-rich region and flooded the sky with soot — but that only about 13% of the planet's surface has enough sedimentary organic material and sulfur to have caused such an extreme effect.

In other words, if the asteroid had struck anywhere on the 87% of the planet's surface that isn't as hydrocarbon-rich, the dinosaurs might have survived. As it happened, the only dinosaurs to make it through the event were avian dinosaurs — birds. The loss of the rest created a space for mammals to thrive.

Like all theories on the extinction of the dinosaurs, this one is controversial. Most researchers attribute the extinction event to the asteroid strike, but there are various interpretations of why it was so devastating.

The authors of the recent study on the global cooling that followed the event told The Washington Post that it was gases released by the impact that caused the dramatic climate change, not necessarily soot — though they said the specific region the asteroid struck was crucial. Firestorms, toxic chemicals, and acidified oceans may have also played a role.

Other researchers have said the impact triggered an intense period of volcanic activity on the other side of the world that also would have filled the skies with sulfur and soot for years.

An asteroid striking the planet in one of the places that could have triggered these effects is an extremely-low-probability event — but one that changed the history of life on Earth, the Scientific Reports study's authors say.

SEE ALSO: The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs triggered a global disaster far worse than scientists previously thought

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• A dinosaur newly discovered in Mongolia was most likely semiaquatic, a trait that hadn't been found in dinosaurs before.
• The finding helps establish a new subfamily of dinosaurs.
• The creature had a neck like a goose's, wings similar to those of penguins, and sharp claws like those of velociraptors.

Birds are the modern incarnation of dinosaurs.

But some birds live in ways we haven't observed in the dinosaur kingdom. Ducks, for example, alternate between water and land habitats, able to take advantage of both.

Until now, that hadn't been seen in dinosaurs, but the discovery of a duck-like dinosaur from Mongolia may change that.

The new dinosaur, Halszkaraptor escuilliei, was announced on Wednesday in the journal Nature. The remarkably complete fossil skeleton that paleontologists analyzed indicates it was likely a semiaquatic dinosaur, able to both swim and move about on land.

"This is the first dinosaur with a lifestyle similar to aquatic birds — this indicates that these dinosaurs were able to exploit an environment that was not considered in our previous interpretation of dinosaur history," Andrea Cau, a paleontologist at the Giovanni Capellini Geological Museum of the University of Bologna, said in an email.

This finding helps establish a new subfamily of similar dinosaurs, according to the paper. Several other fossil specimens from the same region fit into this family, indicating they're part of the same small branch on the evolutionary tree.

The discovery "illustrates how much of the diversity of Dinosauria remains undiscovered, even in intensely studied regions such as Mongolia," the authors wrote.

Researchers used a scanning method that Cau, the lead author of the study, described as "the most advanced scanning technology ever done on a fossil" to collect about 6,000 GB of data on the fossil while it was still partially embedded in rock. The dinosaur lived between 71 million and 75 million years ago.

It's hard to prove that this was, in fact, a semiaquatic creature, but the specimen has several features that match those of semiaquatic and fully aquatic reptiles and birds. Its arms had structures similar to those that birds like penguins use to swim. And it had a neck like a goose's, with rows of teeth in its mouth.

But instead of webbed feet, it had claws and toes like those of theropod family, which includes velociraptors and Tyrannosaurus rex.

The dinosaur most likely fed on fish, crustaceans, and small reptiles and mammals, Cau said. The other members of this subfamily would have been a similar size.

The finding shows that there's still plenty of new history to be revealed as paleontologists scour the Earth for remains of the past.

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NOW WATCH: Scientists uncovered a bloody, feathered dinosaur tail that got stuck in tree sap 99 million years ago

• Scientists have found a fossil of a 'Mansourasaurus Shahinae' — a dinosaur similar in size to a modern school-bus. 
•  It was 33ft long and weighed 5.5 tons.
• The grasslands, savannas, and rain forests of Africa often conceal the underground rock that may be home to undiscovered fossils. 
• The Mansourasaurus was closer in build to European and Asian titanosaurs than to those from Africa, suggesting that dinosaurs were able to move between the continents. 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists have unearthed in a Sahara Desert oasis in Egypt fossils of a long-necked, four-legged, school bus-sized dinosaur that lived roughly 80 million years ago, a discovery that sheds light on a mysterious time period in the history of dinosaurs in Africa.

Researchers said on Monday the plant-eating Cretaceous Period dinosaur, named Mansourasaurus shahinae, was nearly 33 feet (10 meters) long and weighed 5.5 tons (5,000 kg) and was a member of a group called titanosaurs that included Earth's largest-ever land animals. Like many titanosaurs, Mansourasaurus boasted bony plates called osteoderms embedded in its skin.

Mansourasaurus, which lived near the shore of the ancient ocean that preceded the Mediterranean Sea, is one of the very few dinosaurs known from the last 15 million years of the Mesozoic Era, or age of dinosaurs, on mainland Africa. Madagascar had a separate geologic history.

Its remains, found at the Dakhla Oasis in central Egypt, are the most complete of any mainland African land vertebrate during an even larger time span, the roughly 30 million years before the dinosaur mass extinction 66 million years ago, said paleontologist Hesham Sallam of Egypt's Mansoura University, who led the study published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

The scientists recovered parts of its skull, lower jaw, neck and back vertebrae, ribs, shoulder and forelimb, back foot and osteoderms.

A lot of Africa is covered in grasslands, savannas and rain forests that obscure underlying rock where fossils may be found, said postdoctoral researcher Eric Gorscak of the Field Museum in Chicago, who was formerly at Ohio University.

While as massive as a bull African elephant, Mansourasaurus was modestly sized next to titanosaur cousins such as South America's Argentinosaurus, Dreadnoughtus and Patagotitan and Africa's Paralititan, some exceeding 100 feet (30 meters) long.

"Mansourasaurus, though a big animal by today’s standards, was a pipsqueak compared to some other titanosaurs," said paleontologist Matt Lamanna of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh.

The researchers determined Mansourasaurus was more closely related to European and Asian titanosaurs than to those from elsewhere in Africa and other Southern Hemisphere land masses including South America formerly joined in a super-continent called Gondwana.

"This, in turn, demonstrates for the first time that at least some dinosaurs could move between North Africa and southern Europe at the end of the Mesozoic, and runs counter to long-standing hypotheses that have argued that Africa’s dinosaur faunas were isolated from others during this time," Lamanna said.

(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Peter Cooney)

SEE ALSO: Scientists have discovered a new type of wolf for the first time in 150 years

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• The discovery of a dinosaur footprint at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in 2012 led to the discovery of one of the richest sets of prehistoric tracks from the Cretaceous Period ever seen.
• Among the footprints is "the mother lode of Cretaceous mammal tracks," according to one of the authors of a new study examining the site.
• The discovery shows how early prehistoric mammals interacted with dinosaurs and flying reptiles like pterosaurs more than 100 million years ago.

The scientific treasures at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland stretch back far before the space age, as a recent discovery illustrates.

It turns out they go at least back to the Cretaceous Period, when small mammals scurried about, intermingling with dinosaurs and hiding from hunting pterosaurs that swooped down from the skies.

That's part of the story told by a remarkable slab of sandstone discovered in 2012. The rock contains more than 70 tracks from dinosaurs and mammals, which are described in a new paper published in the journal Scientific Reports on Wednesday.

The wealth of information contained in the slab is enough to transform what we know about how early mammals interacted with dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures.

"The concentration of mammal tracks on this site is orders of magnitude higher than any other site in the world," Martin Lockley, a paleontologist with the University of Colorado, Denver and a co-author on the new paper, said in a feature on the NASA Goddard website. "I don't think I've ever seen a slab this size, which is a couple of square meters, where you have over 70 footprints of so many different types. This is the mother lode of Cretaceous mammal tracks."

An astounding discovery

The site was first uncovered on June 25, 2012, by Ray Stanford, a local dinosaur track expert whose wife Sheila works at Goddard. As the Washington Post's story about the original discovery tells it, Stanford was struck a hunch: He decided to return to a site on the campus where years before he'd found a rock with the imprint of a track from a theropod, a carnivorous dinosaur in the same family as the velociraptor.

There was a lot there waiting to be found.

The discoveries started with a print from a nodosaur, a large plant-eating dinosaur covered in spiky armor.

"Think of it as a four-footed tank," Stanford said at the time.

But that wasn't all. As the new study describes, there were more nodosaur tracks waiting to be found, along with tracks from sauropods, massive lumbering giants with long necks and long tails. There were also tracks from small theropods — three-toed predators from the family of Tyrannosaurus and the Velociraptor — though these ones were the size of crows'. Pterosaur tracks showed that flying reptiles hunted in the area, too.

In addition to all of those, scientists also found many mammal tracks, some likely from species that had never been studied.

These creatures were mostly about the size of squirrels and were probably being hunted by the theropods and pterosaurs. At least one set of tracks is the largest set of mammal footprints — about the size of tracks from a modern raccoon — ever found from the Cretaceous period.

"This could be the key to understanding some of the smaller finds from the area, so it brings everything together," Lockley told the NASA team. "This is the Cretaceous equivalent of the Rosetta stone."

There's something poetic about this astounding discovery being found at a place scientists analyze both the future and, by studying the stars, the past.

As Jim Garvin, the chief scientist at NASA Goddard put it in 2013, we're just now seeing the light that was emitted by stars back when these prehistoric creatures walked the Earth.

"One of the amazing aspects of this find is that some of the starlight now seen in the night sky by astronomers was created in far-distant galaxies when these dinosaurs were walking on mud flats in Cretaceous Maryland where Goddard is now located," Garvin said in 2013. "That starlight (from within the Virgo Supercluster) is only now reaching Earth after having traveled through deep space for 100 million years."

SEE ALSO: How the 'Blue Planet II' production team dealt with a leak when their sub was 1,500 feet deep in Antarctic waters

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NOW WATCH: Why most scientists don't care about these incredible UFO videos

Humans have had a long history. 3.8 million years in the making, to be precise. From the primordial puddle to the modern day, here's how humans have evolved. The following is a review of the life forms depicted in the video.

The origin of life, Prokaryote, Cyanobacteria, Eukaryote, Choanoflagellate, Platyhelminthes (Flatworms), Pikaia, Haikouichthys, Agnatha, Placodermi, Cephalaspis, Coelacanth, Panderichthys, Tiktaalik, Acanthostega, Ichthyostega, Hynerpeton, Tulerpeton, Westlothiana, Hylonomus, Phthinosuchus, Cynognathus, Repenomamus, Juramaia, Plesiadapis, Carpolestes, Aegyptopithecus, Proconsul, Sivapithecus, Ouranopithecus, Orrorin, Ardipithecus, Australopithecus, Homo erectus, Neanderthal, Homo sapiens.

Special Thanks to Dr. Briana Pobiner, Research Scientist and Museum Educator of the Human Origins Program, Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institute.

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• Massive dinosaur footprints were discovered by researchers in Scotland.
• The footprints, which belonged to a species of long-necked dinosaur called sauropods, were dated to 170 million years ago.
• There are only a few confirmed fossils from that time period, so these finds may help scientists paint a better picture of life in that era. 

Researchers identified huge dinosaur footprints in the tidal areas of Scotland's remote Isle of Skye, and the finds could shed new light on a little-understood time period over a hundred million years ago.

The study was published in the Scottish Journal of Geology on Monday, part of a joint research effort between scientists at the University of Edinburgh, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The researchers found over 50 footprints, created around 170 million years ago — the middle Jurassic period, from which only a few fossils have been found — by a species of long-necked dinosaur called sauropods.

The footprints were first spotted by a student in 2016 on Skye, the study's co-author, Steve Brusatte told CNN. 

"We regularly go there to hunt for dinosaur footprints and clues, when the tide went out we noticed them," Brusatte told CNN.

After the first footprints were spotted, the researchers analyzed them using drones and field-based techniques to create a comprehensive map of the site.

The researchers believe the largest footprint belonged to a 10-ton beast that may have been almost 50 feet long.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the fossilized prints is that they were laid down side-by-side with theropod prints, which are predecessors of the Tyrannosaurus Rex. This indicates that the two species — one predator and one herbivore — could have coexisted peacefully when the Isle of Skye was much warmer. 

"This new site records two different types of dinosaurs — long-necked cousins of Brontosaurus and sharp-toothed cousins of T. rex — hanging around a shallow lagoon, back when Scotland was much warmer and dinosaurs were beginning their march to global dominance," Brusatte wrote on the University of Edinburgh's website. 

SEE ALSO: The mystery of dinosaurs' giant horns may finally be solved — and it's about love, not war

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NOW WATCH: This incredible animation shows how humans evolved from early life

• Chris Jones proposed to his girlfriend, Katie Parker, in the middle of the London Marathon on Sunday.
• He was wearing a dinosaur costume.
• A video of Parker joyously freaking out went viral.
• Jones said he ran the marathon in a dinosaur costume to raise money for the children's hospital that treated his cousin who was infected with a rare and deadly flesh-eating virus.
  

At Sunday's London Marathon, Chris Jones ran all 26.2 miles while wearing a Tyrannosaurus Rex costume.

But halfway through, he zipped off his dinosaur costume and proposed to his girlfriend, Katie Parker.

"I've been planning for about a year now," Jones told INSIDER. "She was surprised. She had no idea."

Jones ran the marathon in costume to raise money for the Evelina Children's Hospital, which treated his cousin James when he was infected and nearly killed by a rare, flesh-eating virus when he was 20 months old.

After two months of constant treatment in the hospital, James was finally cured. Now, about six years later, Jones said the apparent under-funding of the National Health Service in the UK, which pays for treatment like what Jones received, inspired him to raise money for the hospital.

"It was like a really rare strain at the time," Jones said. "They had to research and develop whilst they were treating him. They probably operated him maybe 20 or 30 times to basically repair his upper arm."

Jones ran the marathon with Parker's father, Phil Parker, who carried the ring and was dressed as a "Jurassic Park" ranger. The two arranged for a group of around 20 friends and family members to be at a "cheer point" on Tower Bridge, around halfway through the marathon's course.

"It was very emotional. She cried. I cried. Her dad cried. Everyone cried," Jones said. "Everyone was just in shock."

A BBC reporter interviewed the couple after the proposal. Parker's overjoyed reaction went viral.

Later on, Jones posted the full proposal video on Twitter.

But after the proposal, Jones had to go. He had 14 miles left in the marathon.

"I had to go run the second half of the race," Jones said. "She was like, 'Oh, he's gone now?'"

Jones finished the marathon in about six hours — still wearing the T-Rex costume.

Afterward, he and Parker attended a party thrown by the Evelina Children's Hospital charity. He raised nearly $3,700.

James is seven now. Jones says he's doing well.

"He's about the most active, sporty little child you can find," Jones said. "He runs around, winning football trophies. At the time, we all thought it was definitely life-threatening, and the hospital did just such a great job of getting him back into health."

As for the T-Rex costume, he said we haven't seen the last of it.

"I won't be walking down the aisle with it," Jones said. "But I might make a speech with it."

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NOW WATCH: What will happen when Earth's north and south poles flip

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• If you think there's no chance you'll ever see a live dinosaur on the Earth — be prepared to have your mind blown.
• Paleontologists say that birds evolved from dinosaurs, which means dinosaurs are alive today in the form of their bird descendants.
• Here are more fascinating facts about dinosaurs that prove common myths wrong. 

SEE ALSO: Massive dinosaur footprints found in Scotland could shed light into a little-understood time period

Myth: Dinosaurs are extinct

There was definitely a mass extinction event 65 million years ago (probably related to a giant asteroid that smashed into Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula), and it did spell the end for most dinosaur species. But not all. "Today's birds evolved from dinosaurs, which makes them every bit as much of a dinosaur as T. rex or Triceratops," says paleontologist Steve Brusatte, author of the book, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs. "A good analogy is bats. Bats are a weird type of mammal that developed wings and the ability to fly. Birds are a weird type of dinosaur that did the same thing."

Daniel Barta, a PhD candidate at the American Museum of Natural History's Richard Gilder Graduate School, adds that there are more species of birds alive today (at least 10,000) than any other group of land-living animals with backbones. "Dinosaurs are alive and well today in the form of their bird descendants," he says.

Myth: Dinosaurs were scaly lizards

Not necessarily. "There are thousands of fossils of feather-covered dinosaurs that have been found in China over the last two decades," Brusatte says. In fact, fossils show that a cousin of the T. rex called Yutyrannus was covered in downy fluff (which probably didn't make it less scary to its prey). Feathers would have helped dinosaurs regulate their body temperature, so they would have been particularly helpful to smaller animals such as Velociraptors. Even the biggest plant-eaters might have had a little fuzz, like the tufts of hair on elephants.

Myth: Dinosaurs were cold-blooded

Scientists can tell from looking at the microscopic structure of dinosaur bones that they grew rapidly, and only animals like birds and mammals, with fast metabolisms and well-regulated body temperatures, do that. It explains why dinosaurs evolved to have feathers for insulation, but it's still not totally clear whether their body temperatures worked exactly like ours do. "There are a lot of different ways to be 'warm-blooded,'" says Barta. "It is probable that dinosaurs were not exactly like birds or mammals in terms of their metabolism." Check out more interesting animal distinctions you forgot all about.

Gravity's pull prevents most beings from growing tall. But there are some lifeforms that have challenged gravity and won. These lifeforms include varieties of trees, ancient dinosaurs, and creatures of the deep ocean. The following is a transcript of the video.

If you doubled in size, your weight would be 8 times greater. That’s the trouble with growing tall. Gravity’s pull is keeping us all down. But there are a few earthly giants that have fought gravity and won.

The key to growing tall is how you use your energy. That’s why the tallest trees outrank any animal on Earth. Because trees spend all their energy on one thing- growing taller than their fellow neighbors. And there are two trees that are the best growers of them all- giant Redwoods and Mountain Ashes. Redwoods are renowned as the tallest life forms on Earth. But some experts think that Mountain Ashes could grow even taller if humans would stop cutting them down. In fact, the tallest Mountain Ash was just 1 meter shorter than the tallest Redwood.

Unlike plants, animals spend energy on all sorts of tasks like eating, walking, and staying warm. So, they can't grow as tall. But it doesn't mean they're small, either. If you measured this African Elephant from shoulder to ground it would actually be taller than a Giraffe! But thanks to their long, strong necks, giraffes are the tallest animals alive.

And if we look at animals throughout Earth’s history, dinosaurs eclipse them all. These towering Sauropods were the biggest of the bunch. In fact, the top 10 list of tallest animals in history? All dinosaurs.

But, what if we looked at the longest lifeforms too? If you balance the longest Saltwater Crocodile on its nose, it would tie the Giraffe! And if we ignore legs, it gets even better! Tip to tail, the Green Anaconda nearly doubles the height of the tallest Giraffe on record.

But these land dwellers have nothing on animals of the deep. Supported by water, sea life can practically ignore gravity. Which means they can grow much larger. Take the Blue Whale for example. It’s the most massive animal of all time. The entire cast of Broadway’s “The Lion King” can fit on its tongue! But it should be careful not to get tangled up in the tentacles of a Lion’s Mane Jellyfish, which makes a Giant Squid look small by comparison. Now, the biggest fish alive is the Whale Shark. And if we look into the past, things get even bigger.

And where do humans fit into all this? Somewhere near the top, actually. Humans are bigger than 87.6% of mammals on Earth. And the average Dutchman is the tallest of them all. So, there’s no reason to ever feel small again, especially if you’re from the Netherlands.

Fun Fact: The longest lifeform of all time isn’t a plant or animal at all. It’s a Honey Fungus and the biggest one goes on for 3.8 kilometers underneath a forest in Oregon.

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"Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" is full of incorrect dino-depictions. Everything from the colors of the dinosaurs to their roars, and even their lack of feathers, here's five things "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" whiffed. Following is a transcript of the video.

The newest Jurassic World installment is upon us like a hungry T-Rex, who doesn’t have any feathers, for some reason.  Here are a few things Hollywood is still getting wrong about dinosaurs.

Many dinosaurs had feathers, but the dinosaurs of “Jurassic World” are covered in scales.  Like crocodiles and lizards. They might have made an effort to stick a few feathers on this dinosaur, but even if they did, that's not even a real animal. It's a hybrid of two different species, which bring us to our next point...

Genetics doesn't work that way. Sure, similar species can breed. That’s how you get a liger (Lion+Tiger). But the Indoraptor isn’t like a liger. It’s a mix of a type of tyrannosaur and raptor. Two very different kinds of animals. It would be more like if you tried to breed a lion with a wolf, instead. It’s just not going to happen. The DNA is not compatible.

Dinosaurs didn't roar. In the first “Jurassic World”, T. rex’s roar was made from a mix of animal sounds and it sounds pretty similar in the new film. But dinosaurs don’t roar like a lion. They’re related to birds. Which means their voice box was probably similar to a bird’s.

Raptors had wings. First of all, raptor hands didn’t droop down like that. In reality, that would only happen if their wrists were broken. In truth, raptors, like birds today, had wings. They couldn’t fly. But the wing shape means that their arms looked nothing like this.

Dinosaurs were colorful. Yeah, “Jurassic World’s” dinosaurs are way too dull. Sure, earth tones like green and brown are common in today’s reptiles. But paleontologists have found that dinosaurs came in a kaleidoscope of bright colors just like today’s birds. Some even had shiny, iridescent feathers!

We get it, Hollywood, T-rex is scarier with its iconic roar. And velociraptors look more vicious without those ridiculous feathers. But C'mon! You could at least add a little more color.  Maybe next time.

This video was made in large part thanks to paleontologist Steve Brusatte, author of “The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs.”

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• Scientists from the Universidad Nacional de San Juan in Argentina have discovered a new type of "giant" dinosaur.
• The dinosaur, named Ingentia Prima, is thought to be a "missing link" between small and large dinosaurs.
• The results suggest that more dinosaur species could be discovered that we still don't know about.

Further light has been shed on ideas previously proposed about how small, bipedal dinosaurs became gigantic, long-necked Sauropods, following a study recently published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Until now, researchers assumed that all types of dinosaurs grew gradually and that they all began to increase in size at roughly the same time during the Jurassic period.

Argentinean researchers at the Universidad Nacional de San Juan, however, believe the trend towards gigantism may have begun much earlier than previously thought: a new dinosaur species dubbed Ingentia Prima has been found and it has none of the features typical among Sauropods — which were previously considered prerequisites for gigantism.

"As soon as we found it, we realized it was something different," said Apaldetti in a press release. "We found a shape, the first giant one among all the dinosaurs. That's the surprise."

After the beginning of the age of the dinosaurs, long-necked giants with bodies weighing in the region of 10 tons came about quite quickly — but just how exactly these column-legged giants sprouted from their comparatively tiny, bipedal ancestors has remained a mystery.

That is, until now. The reason so little was known on the subject was simply that the fossils linking the two dinosaur types together were missing from the timeline — and these recently discovered Sauropod fossils will finally allow conclusions to be drawn on when the growth spurts actually began.

The name of the new species, Ingentia Prima, derives from the Latin words for "huge" and "first", as the researchers consider it to be the "first of the giants". Cecilia Apaldetti and her colleagues at the Universidad Nacional de San Juan estimate the animal to have weighed in at over 10 tons and to have had a length (including neck and tail) of around 10 metres.

With its weight corresponding to that of about two or three African elephants, "Ingentia prima" could give us clues on how and when dinosaur gigantism began, according to the researchers. The scientists believe Igentia Prima could have laid the foundations for the giant Sauropods that would follow approximately 100 million years later.

The fossil also gives clues as to how exactly the dinosaur was able to grow so quickly: the team identified a birdlike respiratory system in which the animal would have been able to obtain oxygen and cool down more quickly. The exposed bones also show signs of separate growth spurts, while later Sauropods increased in size much more gradually, according to the researchers.

These results suggest that more dinosaur species we still don't know about are yet to be discovered.

SEE ALSO: Researchers have found remarkable remains of destroyed planets in space

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Five dinosaur eggs were found in the Guangdong province of China. The eggs are believed to be 70 million years old. Three of the five eggs were destroyed but were still visible in the fossil. They likely belonged to a plant-eating dinosaur in the Cretaceous period.

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When researchers at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) pieced together the fossilized 75-million-year-old bones of the ankylosaurid specimen they acquired last year, they noticed something strange.

The remarkably well-preserved armored dinosaur — which was a new species — bore an uncanny resemblance to an already existing fictional character: Zuul, from the 1984 film "Ghostbusters."

The dinosaur and fictional demon both have a "short, rounded snout and prominent horns behind the eyes," according to a statement from the museum.

Here's Zuul the dinosaur:

And here is Zuul, Gatekeeper of Gozer:

The newly identified ankylosaurid's full name is Zuul crurivastator, with the species name translating to "destroyer of shins." The dinosaur belongs to a group of armored creatures that had massive, weapon-like clubs for tails. These tails were about 10 feet long and covered in spikes (so able to destroy the shins of any predators willing to take them on).

The Ontario researchers describe the creature in a new study published in the journal Royal Society of Open Science.

All in all, it was about 20 feet long, on par with a white rhinoceros.

The armored herbivore's bones came from the Judith River Formation of Montana.

"The preservation of the fossil is truly remarkable. Not only is the skeleton almost completely intact, but large parts of the bony armor in the skin are still in its natural position," Dr. David Evans, Temerty Chair and Curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum, and leader of the project, said in a press release.

Those well-preserved bones helped confirm that this is indeed a new species.

"I’ve been working on ankylosaurs for years, and the spikes running all the way down Zuul’s tail were a fantastic surprise to me – like nothing I’ve ever seen in a North American ankylosaur," said Dr. Victoria Arbour, the lead author of the study. "It was the size and shape of the tail club and tail spikes, combined with the shape of the horns and ornaments on the skull, that confirmed this skeleton was a new species of ankylosaur."

It's been a good week for dinosaur discoveries. On May 9, researchers published a study identifying for the first time a creature that was discovered 20 years ago. It made the cover of National Geographic magazine at that time, but its species didn't get determined until now. That dinosaur, a type of giant oviraptor, resembled an ostrich and was about 25 feet long. It has been officially dubbed Beibeilong sinensis, or "baby dragon from China."

The "baby dragon" fossils are 90 million years old, so the two newly named dinos were not contemporaries and lived in different locations. But if they had ever come into contact, it's safe to say that Zuul's armor and tail could have helped protect it from the giant birdlike predator.

SEE ALSO: The largest dinosaur footprint ever found has been discovered in 'Australia's own Jurassic Park'

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NOW WATCH: 5 dinosaur eggs were just discovered at a construction site in China

Have you ever heard of the tuatara? It’s a reptile that decapitates birds with its saw-like jaws, lives to about 100 years old, and can remain active in near-freezing temperatures.

It’s also the sole survivor of a lineage as old as the first dinosaurs.

May 2017 marks 150 years since the tuatara was first recognised not to be a lizard.

Most tuatara exist on windswept offshore New Zealand islands, where they spend their days in burrows or basking lazily in the sun.

In the evening they are more active, and use their large eyes to spot a variety of prey such as beetles, spiders and snails. They also occasionally eat lizards, frogs, baby tuatara and birds – the headless bodies of birds are not infrequently reported from their island homes.

Although capable of bursts of speed, tuatara have a reputation for slowness. They grow slowly, they reproduce slowly and they live for a long time.

Interestingly, they are most active at cool temperatures (5-18℃) that would put many other reptiles out of action. New Zealand lizards have similar traits, suggesting that these characteristics are relatively recent adaptations to local conditions.

The tuatara is often referred to as having a third eye because of a light-sensitive organ on the top of its head, similar to the ones found in many lizards.

Ancient isolation

Ancestors of the tuatara have probably been on land associated with New Zealand since it separated from the rest of the Gondwana supercontinent about 80 million years ago. During that time, they have had to cope with big changes in the region’s shape and size (New Zealand may have been mostly submerged 23 million years ago) and, until recently, a cooling climate.

Recent fossils from the past few thousand years show that tuatara were widespread across the mainland until humans arrived (with Pacific rats) about 750 years ago.

Tuatara are now threatened by climate change. This is because the sex of a tuatara is determined by the temperature that their eggs experience – rising temperatures will skew populations towards males.

Mainland reintroductions to cooler latitudes will hopefully reduce this problem. Captive breeding programs are also showing signs of success.

A special place in biodiversity

The initial claim that the tuatara is not a lizard was based on anatomical differences such as the presence of a second row of upper teeth, which is not seen in any lizard.

Subsequent genetic and fossil discoveries have confirmed that the tuatara has a separate heritage.

We now know that the tuatara is the only living member of Rhynchocephalia, a reptile group that was diverse and widespread between 240 million and 60 million years ago. Its fossil relatives included small carnivores with scissor-like jaws, large chunky herbivores, and even aquatic forms with crushing tooth plates.

The tuatara is often referred to as a “living fossil” or even a “living dinosaur”. Although these labels are not helpful scientifically, they reflect a widespread appreciation that the tuatara has a special place in the animal kingdom.

The animal group known as “amniote vertebrates” includes more than 30,000 species divided between six major radiations: mammals (5,416 species), turtles (341), crocodylians (25), birds (at least 15,845), lizards and snakes (10,078), and (tuatara).

As the only living member of Rhychocephalia, and only living cousin to Squamata (lizards and snakes), the tuatara has an important role to play in understanding the evolution of all animals with backbones.

Recent contributions to science

Despite several hundred research articles on the tuatara, we are still learning new things about this species all the time.

The origin of male genitals

Recent examination of tuatara embryos suggests that although adult male tuatara lack external genitalia (that is, they have no external penis), their ancestors did possess a penis of some kind.

This evidence in turn supports a hypothesis that external genitalia originated just once within amniotes (mammals, birds, crocodiles, lizards, tuatara) but has since undergone dramatic modification and was even lost in some groups of birds as well as an ancestor of the tuatara.

Biomechanics of biting

The frame-like skull of the tuatara has also become an important subject for biomechanics.

Sophisticated computer models have been used to predict muscle activity, bite force, sensory feedback from the jaw joints and stress distribution in the bones during biting.

These models have also shown that the shearing action of the lower jaw involves tooth on tooth contact and that the soft-tissue connections between bones are important for spreading stress around the skull more evenly.

How kneecaps developed

Recently, X-ray micro CT scans of several tuatara specimens helped established which sesamoid bones– structures at joints such as the knee cap – are likely to be relatively ancient and which are relatively new.

Culture, myths and legends

The tuatara is a national icon in New Zealand, where it has appeared on the five cent coin and several postage stamps.

Further afield, it has also given its name to a brewery, musical group, a DC super hero, a backpackers accommodation, a tour company, a scientific journal, a company selling mobile phone covers, and, with no hint of irony, a V8 sports car that can reach a top speed of 444km per hour.

Tuatara are highly important to māori culture. The word “tuatara” is itself māori, meaning “peaks on back” (referring to the crest along its neck and back). Tuatara are regarded as “taonga” (treasure), viewed as guardians of knowledge, and sometimes associated with bad omens.

A curious urban legend associated with the tuatara is that of the cenaprugwirion, a “curious 1-ft-long lizard-like reptile supposedly inhabiting burrows in and around Abersoch in North Wales”.

Before tuatara were protected in 1895, they were commonly imported to Europe as pets and curios. Some have suggested these animals might represent escaped tuatara from that time.

Tuatara are frequently in the news. During the 1980s, wild population of tuatara were targeted by poachers who were suspected to be selling them in exchange for drugs.

Henry the tuatara acquired celebrity status when he became a dad at 111 and met Prince Harry several years later.

SEE ALSO: Scientists discovered a new 'shin-destroying' armored dinosaur — and named it after Zuul from 'Ghostbusters'

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The largest dinosaurs to have ever lived were surprisingly light. I know that might sound strange when we’re talking about animals stretching over 100 feet long and weighing upwards of 45 tons, but it’s true. Immense, long-necked dinosaurs like Supersaurus had extraordinarily light bones assisted by a complex system of air sacs that so pervaded their skeletons that you can see exactly where they would have been even though the actual soft tissues decayed away millions and millions of years ago. This was true for comparatively smaller species, too. Even an "average" sauropod was far larger than an African elephant or Paraceratherium, the largest land mammal of all time. Sauropods were enormous by comparison, and air sacs assisted them at all scales.

Not all sauropod had the same complement of air sacs, though. The anatomy and extent of those structures varied from species to species. And, as paleontologist Luci Ibiricu and colleagues report, a South American sauropod named Katepensaurus goicoecheai had a pneumatic variation never seen before.

If you haven’t heard of Katepensaurus before, that’s probably because it was part of a relatively obscure group of sauropods called rebbachisauridsthat lived in South America, Africa, and Europe. They were cousins of Diplodocus that were stomping around during the Cretaceous, after the heyday of North American diplodocids was long over. But apparently some of these dinosaurs took pneumatic skeletons to a degree not seen before in other dinosaurs.

Drawing from external anatomy, CT scans, and digital models of the dinosaur’s bones, Ibiricu and coauthors detected evidence of interconnected air sacs in the transverse processes of Katepensaurus back vertebrae. These are the wings of bone that stick out on either side of a vertebral body and are important muscle attachment sites. No one had seen evidence of pneumatic structures like these before in sauropods. The closest comparable structures had only been seen in avian dinosaurs – birds – and other theropods.

Looked at as a whole, Katepensaurus had a pretty light skeleton. The bones of the dinosaur’s neck and spine give away the presence of an extensive air sac skeleton like that seen in many of its relatives, and the discovery of new air spaces in the vertebrae along the dinosaur’s back only add to the view of sauropods as light for their size. This unique system likely even extended into the tail vertebrae.

But what does this all mean for how the dinosaur lived? Ibiricu and colleagues have some ideas. The most obvious consequence would be that the air sacs allowed sauropods to keep their bones light without sacrificing strength. That’s one of the benefits modern birds enjoy from having extensive air sac systems. And even this fact has further implications. A lighter skeleton requires less muscle power to move, Ibiricu and coauthors note, and therefore reduced the amount of bodily heat produced by motion. Given that Katepensaurus and its exceptionally-airy relatives lived at a time of high global temperatures, anything that would have staved off heat stress would have been an advantage.

Without a living Katepensaurus, this idea is difficult to test. And the researchers point out that other sauropods that lived in the same places and times as exceptionally-airy rebbachisaurids didn’t share the same degree of pneumatic modification, so perhaps the heat hypothesis isn’t the whole story here. Nevertheless, the entire point of paleontology is to try to understand long-dead species as they were in life. That requires putting ourselves in the place of these organisms, thinking of the pressures and needs they experienced on a daily basis. Thinking of how a little extra inflation benefitted Katepensaurus is a step in that direction.

Reference:

Ibiricu, L., Lamanna, M., Martínez, R., Casal, G., Cerda, I., Martínez, G., Salgado, L. 2017. A novel form of postcranial skeletal pneumaticity in a sauropod dinosaur: implications for the paleobiology of Rebbachisauridae. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica. doi: 10.4202/app.00316.2016

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NOW WATCH: Scientists uncovered a bloody, feathered dinosaur tail that got stuck in tree sap 99 million years ago

Everyone recognizes the large purple dinosaur, but not many people know the man inside the costume. David Joyner played Barney for 10 years on TV and in live performances, and dancing around in that huge costume was not very easy. We spoke with Joyner about what it was like being one of the most famous children's characters of all time, and what he is up to now.

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Following is a transcript of the video:

Being Barney was never an accident. I was supposed to do this character.

Hi I'm David Joyner. I played Barney from 1991 until 2001.

After I got my degree in electronic engineering technology, I worked for Texas Instruments for six years as a software analyst. Before I was Barney, I was a live mannequin. I would move mechanically. And people would literally bring their children, set them on the mall floor, and go shop.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be on television so bad. I would stand in front of the television and basically lip sync.

There's a lot of psychic energy in my family, and there's a lot of clairvoyance. And a lot of times, with me, if I'm trying to figure out a situation, I'll dream about it.

Well the night before the audition, I had this dream. And in this dream, Barney passes out. And I have to give Barney mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. So on the way to the audition, I'm sitting at a stoplight, and something says "Look up." So I look up, and there's this billboard. It says "Breathe life into your vacation — Southwest Airlines." And then it hits me. I had to breathe life into Barney in my dream. If I go into this audition and breathe life into this character, I'm going on vacation. And that's exactly what I did.

So, of course, they called me and asked if I would be Barney. And I said, "Of course." I pretty much already knew that I was going to be Barney. But it was great getting that phone call.

Being inside this costume is pretty cool. Now Barney is about 70 pounds, and it can get over 120 degrees inside. So inside you're sweating profusely. It's a t-rex, so you're basically just up to your elbows in being able to move. And then also, Barney's feet were huge. Now I did have some sneakers inside that were glued to the bottom of the feet.

The head doesn't come off. The head doesn't swivel. There's no facial expressions that can be made. I can only see a certain amount, because of the peripheral of Barney's mouth. And when Barney's mouth is closed, I can't see anything. So what I would literally do is I would walk around my apartment as if I was blind. I would close my eyes, and I would try to feel energy. And try to feel the energy of anything that was around me. And then try to pick things up.

Sometimes, when they took a break, I put a fan in the mouth, I'd sit down on an Apple box, and I'd put my hand on my knees, and I would just close my eyes. So I would literally meditate.

When I was 19, I started studying Tantra. And a lot of times when people think about Tantra they think it's all about sex. Well Tantra's much more than that. Because Tantra deals with loving energy,  life force energy, and energy that rises through your system.

Now, it's no accident that I've been spreading "I love you" all around the world.

Now a lot of times you hear those words, and some people like, "Oh my god, that song," and I'm like, "No, no, no" listen to it. I love you, you love me. We're a happy family. So now, we're now gathered together in this beautiful harmonious thing that’s happening. So it's a beautiful thing to know how that song has impacted pretty much this next generation.

The voice of Barney was a gentleman named Bob West. We would do what we call "dinosync." As I have my headphones on, I can literally hear him taking his breath. And knowing that as he's about to speak, I'm almost inside of him, knowing exactly what he's about to say.

I remember receiving the first residual check, and the check was so big. And I was just like, "Oh my god, are you kidding me?" So I had this beautiful white stucco home, and I paid for the house with residuals, which is really cool.

After doing Barney for 10 years, I decided, "Ok, it's time to make that move to Los Angeles." And if I don't make the move now, then I'll probably never make that move.

I was on "Shameless.""That '70s Show.""ER." A SWAT agent on "24." I was an attorney on "The Young and the Restless."

So "Hip Hop Harry" is what I'm doing now. "Hip Hop Harry" is a cool, hip-hop rapping, break dancing teddy bear that runs an after-school center called Hip Hop Central.

And our ratings are starting to grow. I'm 53 years old. And I am not ashamed to admit that I am 53 years old, still playing in costumes.

 Barney was beautiful. Barney was very, very good to me. I loved being Barney. I loved everything about being Barney. But that chapter is gone.

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Scientists at the University of Manchester have new proof that T. rex wasn't nearly as terrifying as we thought. The animal's tremendous size and weight prevented it from running at top speeds of 45 mph, like is shown in the blockbuster "Jurassic Park." If T. rex ran at those speeds its leg bones would have snapped under the force. Sad.

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