Limping Dinosaurs? Trackway evidence for abnormal gaits

Abstract

At least nine different dinosaur trackways are known that reveal alternating long and short steps indicative of limping or some other unusual gait. The reasons for such abnormal dinosaur gaits are not clear in most cases, but they may be related to foot injuries, at least in one example. Most abnormal gait patterns have been observed in bipedal dinosaurs, but they have also been noted in the trackways of quadrupedal dinosaurs. Measurements of the trackway of a limping person reveal similar alternating long and short steps, and suggest that short steps precede the emplacement of an injured foot, and that long steps follow.

The ratio of short/long step length provides a measure of the degree of limping. In narrow trackways of limping bipeds, stride length is close to 2 x mean step length, and is quite regular regardless of significant differences in the length of consecutive steps. Such regularity in stride length is not always so apparent in the trackways of quadrupeds, where trackways are wider and several alternate measures of stride length can be selected (pes‐pes, manus‐manus, or mean of both). In the wide trackways of quadrupeds stride length is much less than 2 x mean step length.

Key words:

• Limping dinosaurs
• alternate long and short steps
• abnormal gaits
• foot injuries
• dinosaur trackways