Tyrannosaurus Was Not A Fast Runner

John Hutchinson

Tyrannosaurus was not a fast runner

Corrections And Errata

Corrections to PDF preprints and published text:

Table 1, Alligator information: L row numbers should read as follows:

0.092 - 0.037 0.019

Table 1, Gallus information: L row numbers should read as follows:

0.085 0.051 0.032 0.026

Table 1, Gallus information: m_i row numbers should read as follows (correction published in Nature 417:349):

1.1 0.079 2.0 1.5

Page 1020, second column, 3rd full paragraph: "dashed curve" should read "solid curve."

Corrections to supplementary information:

Table A corrections:
CM position of small tyrannosaur thigh should be 0.163m, not 0.160; metatarsus should be 0.185m; not 0.163.
Toe joint angle for Alligator should be 10 degrees, not 110.
Joint angles for Gallus should be 50 and 65 for the hip and toe, not 55 and 95.

The giant chicken scaling example used slightly different joint angles [10/55/90/120/75] than the Gallus model [15/50/90/120/65]; hence T was about 21x higher (99%), rather than 13x higher (62%) with identical joint angles, as the scaling of T predicts.

Trex_3 hip joint angle should be 80 degrees, not 180 degrees.

Comment on the use of italics and proper spelling of dinosaur names:

The official wording is "Tyrannosaurus rex" (italicized with capital "T" and lower case "r"). After that name is used once, the abbreviation "T. rex" (not Trex, T-rex, or T-Rex) may be used. This is the formal way to use all genus and species names in biology. Alternatively, just the genus name Tyrannosaurus can be used, without the rex.

Comments on other dinosaurs:

Theropod ("thair-oh-pod"; not therapod or theripod) dinosaurs are the bipedal carnivores including Tyrannosaurus, Velociraptor, Allosaurus, and similar forms. Smaller, non-flying theropods were ancestral to birds. Herbivorous dinosaurs such as the ornithiscians Triceratops and Edmontosaurus, and the huge sauropods Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus, were not theropods but were dinosaurs.

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