Robot Recreates The Walk Of a 290 Million Year old Creature
Robot Recreates The Walk Of a 290 Million Year old Creature
“Mr.Melo says It walked with a fairly upright posture”.
“It didn’t drag its belly or tail”.
How did the earliest land animals move? Scientists have used a nearly 300 million year old fossil skeleton and preserved ancient foot prints to create a moving robot model of prehistoric life. The four legged plant eater lived before the dinosaurs and delight scientists because of its area on the tree of life. Researchers believe the creature is a stem amniote an early land dwelling animal that later expand into current mammals, birds and reptiles. Scientists believe the first amphibious animals emerged on land 350 million years ago and the first amniotes emerged around 310 million years ago.
Mr. Nyakatura says the fossil called Orabates pabsti is a beautifully preserved and articulated skeleton. what’s more Scientists have previously identified fossilised footprints left by the 3 foot long creature. Their results were published in the journal Nature. The researchers built a life size replica of the prehistoric beast We carefully modelled each and every bone and then tested the motion in various ways that would lead its gait to match the antique tracks, ruling out combo that were not anatomically possible.
They repeated the exercise with a lightly scaled up robot version, which they called Orobot. The Robot is made of motors associated by 3D printed plastics and steel parts. The model helps us to teat real world dynamics to account for gravity and friction. The team also compared their image to living animals, including salamanders and iguanas. Machinery such as robotics computer design and CT scans are convert palaeontology giving us even more fascinating reconstructions of the past. Based on the Robot model, the scientists said they think the fellow had more advanced locomotion than previously thought for such an early land animals.
P.P.Neelayathakshi