Scientists digitally reconstruct giant steps taken by dinosaurs

30 Oct 2013 One of the world's largest dinosaurs has been digitally reconstructed by experts from The University of Manchester allowing it to take its first steps in over 94 million years. The Manchester team, working with scientists in Argentina, were able to laser scan a 40 metre-long skeleton of the vast Cretaceous Argentinosaurus dinosaur. Then using an advanced computer modeling technique involving the equivalent of 30,000 desktop computers they recreated its walking and running movements and tested - its locomotion ability tested for the very first time. The study, published in PLOS ONE , provides the first ever 'virtual' trackway of the dinosaur and disproves previous suggestions that the animal was inflated in size and could not have walked. Dr Bill Sellers, lead researcher on the project from the University's Faculty of Life Sciences, said: "If you want to work out how dinosaurs walked, the best approach is computer simulation. This is the only way of bringing together all the different strands of information we have on this dinosaur, so we can reconstruct how it once moved. Dr Lee Margetts, who also worked on the project, said: "We used the equivalent of 30,000 desktop computers to allow Argentinosaurus to take its first steps in over 94 million years.