Robot recreates the walk of a 290-million-year-old creature
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How did the earliest land animals move? To find out, scientists created a moving robot model of prehistoric life. They used a nearly 300-million-year old fossil skeleton. And they used preserved ancient footprints to create the model.
John Nyakatura is an evolutionary biologist at Humboldt University. It is in Berlin. He has spent years studying a 290-million-year-old fossil. It was dug up in central Germany's Bromacker quarry. That was in 2000. The four-legged plant-eater lived before the dinosaurs. It fascinates scientists "because of its position on the tree of life," said Nyakatura. Researchers believe the creature is a "stem amniote." That is an early land-dwelling animal that later evolved. It evolved into modern mammals. It evolved into 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.
The fossil is called Orabates pabsti. It is a "beautifully preserved and articulated skeleton," said Nyakatura. What's more, scientists have previously identified fossilized footprints left by the 3-foot-long creature.
Nyakatura teamed up with robotics expert Kamilo Melo. He works at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. They developed a model of how the creature moved. Their results were published in the journal Nature.
The researchers built a life-size replica of the prehistoric beast. "We carefully modeled each and every bone," said Nyakatura. Then they tested the motion in various ways that would lead its gait to match the ancient tracks. This ruled out combinations that were not anatomically possible.
They repeated the exercise with a slightly-scaled up robot version. They called it OroBOT. The robot is made of motors. They are connected by 3D-printed plastic and steel parts. The model "helps us to test real-world dynamics. This accounts for gravity and friction," said Melo. The team also compared their models to living animals. These included salamanders and iguanas.
Technology is transforming paleontology. This technology includes robotics and computer modeling. It also includes CT scans. It is "giving us ever more compelling reconstructions of the past," said Andrew Farke. He is curator at the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology. It is in Claremont, California. He was not involved in the study.
Based on the robot model, 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.)
"It walked with a fairly upright posture," said Melo. "It didn't drag its belly or tail."
Thomas R. Holtz is a paleontologist at the University of Maryland. He was not involved in the study. He said the research suggests "an upright stance goes further back than we originally thought."
Stuart Sumida is a paleontologist at California State University in San Bernardino. He was part of the initial team that excavated Orobates fossils. He called it "an exciting study." Sumida, who was not involved in the robot project, said the work provided "a 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."