Only fossils remain of an approximately 300-million-year old Vertebrate. Using a robot, researchers have deciphered the end of the EPFL, as the animal was moving. And thus create new insights into the Evolution of running in land vertebrates.
the land vertebrates (Tetrapoda) learned apparently, earlier in the efficient Running of the country than previously thought. The closing of Researchers from the ETH Lausanne (EPFL) and the Humboldt – University of Berlin from computer simulations and studies with a robot with which you nachbildeten the movement of a prehistoric vertebrate. The scientists led by Auke Ijspeert of the EPFL in the journal “Nature” reports.
Orobates pabsti lived about 290 million years ago, before the time of the dinosaurs. This plant-eater is one of the oldest land vertebrate, the Researchers of well-preserved fossils and petrified Footprints can link, such as the EPFL announced on Wednesday.
In the Evolution of Orobates is also one in amphibians, and for reproduction from the water independent of reptiles and mammals. This is the animal made an ideal candidate to explore the Evolution of locomotion in terrestrial vertebrates.
in the Computer, then as OroBOT
To this end, the researchers created the Humboldt-University of a computer simulation of the skeleton on the basis of fossil of Orobates and biomechanical data to still-living amphibians and reptiles, with a similar physique. On the basis of this model, you after formed his Gang with the fossil the traced Footprints as control whether the Animation is similar to the foot-generated traces.
in Parallel, the EPFL buildings, researchers Kamilo Melo, and Tomislav Horvat a Orobates robot, the OroBOT. To check this has allowed various hypotheses on the dynamics of the movement of the animal in the real world with its physical laws.
hundreds of gear types tested by the scientists and certain of what Orobates could actually have and which are not. By analyzing, among other things, how much energy the different types of movement needed, such as stable movement and to fit like the footprints, were able to determine, the scientists, the most likely gait.
Accordingly, the speed of Orobates similar to today’s alligators, kept more upright on his four legs, and it doesn’t fell like Salamander. A more energy-efficient gait with a straighter, more legs could have developed earlier than previously thought. Namely, before the common ancestor of reptiles and mammals.
(oli/sda)
Created: 16.01.2019, 20:57 PM
