Scientists from the Royal Veterinary College of the University of London were able to digitally remake a chase scene with two dinosaurs from 112 million years ago.
The group, led by researcher Peter Falkingham, used 17 old photos taken of two sets of dinosaur tracks 70 years ago next to the Paluxy River in Texas, according to CNET.
The project's results were published under the title "Historical Photogrammetry: Bird's Paluxy River Dinosaur Chase Sequence Digitally Reconstructed as It Was prior to Excavation 70 years Ago" in the journal Plos One.
The chase took place in the Cretaceous Period in what is now Glen Rose, in which a long-necked sauropod dinosaur was followed by a meat-eating theropod. The theropod followed in the area hours or maybe days later, and overlaid some of the sauropod's footprints with its own, Fox News reported.
The footprints were frozen in rock and discovered by paleontologists in 1917. They were then excavated in 1940.
"It's great to get so many stride lengths, so many depths and impressions," Falkingham said. "There's all this data you can get from an animal moving over quite a long distance."
The original Paluxy River Trackway was broken up because it was about 30 feet long, and some of the remaining parts of the chase are fading away, CNET reported.
The chase was reconstructed with the help of photographs, laser scans of remaining samples and historic hand-drawn maps of the area. The researchers used VisualSFM 3D construction, and this marks the first time the chase scene has been all together since the original discovery.
The final image has a fuzzy area at the north end, which is where the photos were less complete, Fox News reported. However, the final image has enough detail to show the dinosaurs' toe prints at the south end of the trackway.
The success of the remade chase scene can help scientists better understand other lost or unfinished discoveries, CNET reported.
"It is an exciting prospect to think that many palaeontological or archeological specimens that have been lost to science, or suffered irreparable damage, may be digitally reconstructed in 3D using free software and a desktop computer," the paper says.
