Scientists tangle over a Jurassic thriller: May the tail of a dinosaur go supersonic?

The dinosaur previously referred to as Brontosaurus might definitely do a number of injury with its lengthy tail — however simply how briskly might that tail whip?

Years in the past, a crew of researchers — together with Nathan Myhrvold, a former Microsoft govt who’s now the CEO of Bellevue, Wash.-based Mental Ventures — constructed a quarter-scale dinosaur tail from 3-D printed vertebrae and a bullwhip popper, and thrashed it round. Their intention was to indicate that the diplodocid dinosaur now referred to as Apatosaurus louisae might whip its tail with a supersonic crack greater than 150 million years in the past.

The crew decided that the tail might certainly go supersonic, producing a crack as loud because the report of a naval gun and most certainly scaring off potential predators. However now different researchers say their laptop modeling exhibits that Apatosaurus’ tail wasn’t structurally robust sufficient to maintain a supersonic crack.

“Such an elongated and slender construction would enable attaining tip velocities within the order of 30 m/s, or 100 km/h [62 mph], far slower than the velocity of sound,” a crew led by Simone Conti of Portugal’s NOVA Faculty of Science and Know-how asserted this week in Scientific Studies.

Suffice it to say that Myhrvold isn’t satisfied. “Their mannequin is a joke,” he informed GeekWire in an e mail. “They made a mannequin that had a low most velocity, within the movement they tried. They didn’t transfer the tail within the appropriate method. … That is very very similar to saying, ‘Gee, I purchased a bullwhip and wiggled it, however didn’t hear a crack, in order that refutes that bullwhips can crack!’”

So apparently the velocity of a dinosaur’s tail will proceed to be underneath dispute. Let’s simply hope dueling paleontologists don’t pull out the bullwhips.