A rare set of Tyrannosaurus rex footprints told scientists about the speed with which the most famous predators among dinosaurs moved. This is covered in the journal Cretaceous Research.
Tyrannosaurus rex footprints are extremely rare for paleontologists. Even less common are a series of footprints of the same animal, such as those found by Canadian scientist Scott Persons in Wyoming.
Three tracks belong to either a young tyrannosaurus rex or the smaller theropod Nanotyrannus lancensis. Persons calculated the approximate height of the hips above the ground (based on the known length of the paw prints) from 1.56 to 2.07 meters. He then measured the distance between the prints and used data from modern bipedal animals to get the speed of the lizard: 4.5-8 kilometers per hour.
However, the maximum speed of the lizard could be much higher: up to 11 kilometers per hour, noted the author of another study, Eric Snively (Eric Snively). Even an amateur runner could escape from such a dinosaur, not to mention professional athletes.