{"id":198568,"date":"2019-01-21T01:33:25","date_gmt":"2019-01-21T06:33:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=198568"},"modified":"2019-01-21T01:33:25","modified_gmt":"2019-01-21T06:33:25","slug":"robot-recreates-the-walk-of-a-290-million-year-old-creature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/01\/21\/robot-recreates-the-walk-of-a-290-million-year-old-creature\/","title":{"rendered":"Robot recreates the walk of a 290 million year old creature"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Scientists believe the first amphibious animals emerged on land 350 million years ago and the first amniotes emerged around 310 million years ago. (Photo<\/a>: Ecole polytechnique f\u00e9d\u00e9rale de Lausanne\/Website<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 How did the earliest land animals move? Scientists have used a nearly 300-million-year old fossil skeleton and preserved ancient footprints to create a moving\u00a0robot\u00a0model of prehistoric life.<\/p>\n

Evolutionary biologist John Nyakatura at Humboldt University in Berlin has spent years studying a 290-million-year-old fossil dug up in central Germany’s Bromacker quarry in 2000. The four-legged plant-eater lived before the dinosaurs and fascinates scientists \u201cbecause of its position on the tree of life,\u201d said Nyakatura. Researchers believe the creature is a \u201cstem amniote\u201d \u2014 an early land-dwelling animal that later evolved into modern mammals, birds and reptiles.<\/p>\n

Scientists believe the first amphibious animals emerged on land 350 million years ago and the first amniotes emerged around 310 million years ago.<\/p>\n

The fossil, called Orabates pabsti, is a \u201cbeautifully preserved and articulated skeleton,\u201d said Nyakatura. What’s more, scientists have previously identified fossilized footprints left by the 3-foot-long (90 cm) creature.<\/p>\n

Nyakatura teamed up with robotics expert Kamilo Melo at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne to develop a model of how the creature moved. Their results were published Wednesday in the journal Nature.<\/p>\n

The researchers built a life-size replica of the prehistoric beast \u2014 \u201cwe carefully modeled each and every bone,\u201d said Nyakatura \u2014 and then tested the motion in various ways that would lead its gait to match the ancient tracks, ruling out combinations that were not anatomically possible.<\/p>\n

They repeated the exercise with a slightly-scaled up\u00a0robot\u00a0version , which they called OroBOT. The\u00a0robot\u00a0is made of motors connected by 3D-printed plastic and steel parts. The model \u201chelps us to test real-world dynamics, to account for gravity and friction,\u201d said Melo. The team also compared their models to living animals, including salamanders and iguanas.<\/p>\n

Technology such as robotics, computer modeling and CT scans are transforming paleontology, \u201cgiving us ever more compelling reconstructions of the past,\u201d said Andrew Farke, curator at the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology in Claremont, California, who was not involved in the study.<\/p>\n

Based on the\u00a0robot\u00a0model, the scientists said they think the creature had more advanced locomotion than previously thought for such an early land animal. (Think more scampering than slithering.)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt walked with a fairly upright posture,\u201d said Melo. \u201cIt didn’t drag its belly or tail.\u201d<\/p>\n

University of Maryland paleontologist Thomas R. Holtz, who was not involved in the study, said the research suggests \u201can upright stance goes further back than we originally thought.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stuart Sumida, a paleontologist at California State University in San Bernardino and part of the initial team that excavated Orobates fossils, called it \u201can exciting study.\u201d Sumida, who was not involved in the\u00a0robot\u00a0project, said the work provided \u201ca much more confident window in to what happened long ago. It isn’t a time machine, but Nyakatura and colleagues have given us a tantalizing peek.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 How did the earliest land animals move? Scientists have used a nearly 300-million-year old fossil skeleton and preserved …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":198569,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-198568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","mauthors-christina-larson","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}