April 7, 2009
Tyrannosaurus on the Pitcher’s Mound
For opening day, Major League Baseball teams usually try to find someone prestigious to throw the ceremonial first pitch. The problem is that not everyone asked to throw the first pitch has particularly strong arms, like the juvenile Tyrannosaurus the Chicago White Sox once picked to open their game:
Could a real Tyrannosaurus throw a ball in a similar fashion? Perhaps; adult Tyrannosaurus had extremely well-muscled necks. In a 2007 study by Eric Snively and Anthony Russell, the researchers found that the neck muscles of Tyrannosaurus even allowed it to toss huge hunks of meat towards the back of its mouth or up into the air to catch. Throwing a baseball wouldn’t be a problem of weight, then, but of size. It would be the equivalent of you trying to pitch a breath mint just by whipping your head.
(H/T: Deadspin)
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Do you realize what that footage says? Watch it again. Watch it until the message gets through. Either our robotics is better than mainstream media is letting us know about; or somehow, someway somebody brought a dinosaur to this world.
Note how natural the movements are. Note also how the subject interacts with people. That last is either very good controllers, or a theropod that grew up among humans; a domesticated T. rex.
Now I’m inclined to think that it’s damn good technology, but I’m tempted to see a life animal from a world where dinosaurs survived to modern times was somehow transported to our world. Still and all, even the mundane answer is a most amazing thing.
Even though the video’s a bit ‘fuzzy’ if you look closely you’ll see that the T-rex is actually a person wearing a T-rex suit. You can see the person’s legs inside of the T-rex legs as he/she walks around with the suit on. These were made for the traveling show based on the BBC’s “Walking with Dinosaurs” program, which I got to see at Penn State’s Bryce Jordan Center a few years ago. One of the suits was also shown shortly thereafter on an episode of “Live with Regis and Kelly” when the show came through New York City. Still, pretty darned cool!
Great clip. I’d love to have a puppet like that for Halloween…