Preferred gaits of bipedal dinosaurs

Abstract

Measurements of trackways have been used to determine the gaits and speeds of 267 bipedal dinosaurs. Most of these dinosaurs used a walking gait, with mean relative stride length about 1.3 (i.e. with stride length about 1.3 times estimated height at the hip). For running dinosaurs mean relative stride length is about 3.7. Very few of the track-makers selected a trotting gait (defined by relative stride length between 2.0 and 2.9). It is suggested that the preferred walking and running gaits represent energetic optima, and that the trot was a transitional gait of high energetic cost.