Meat-eating dinosaurs could run as fast as Usain Bolt hitting speeds of 28mph, fossil footprints reveal
SCIENTISTS have figured out how fast a type of dinosaur could run - and it would have given Usain Bolt a run for his money.
The Jamaican sprinter holds the world record in the 100m, 200m, and 4 × 100m relay.
He managed to clock in the fastest recorded footspeed during the 2009 Berlin World Championships, reaching a maximum of 27.8mph.
That was for a 100m race, between meters 60 and 80.
But about 120 million years ago, he might have had a meat-eating rival.
Studying footprints found in Spain, scientists believe they've worked out just how fast the theropod dinosaur group might have been.
It turns out they too could reach speeds of up to 27.8mph.
Who would win a race between the two? Sadly, scientists doubt even Bolt would have been able to outrun a theropod.
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"They are medium-sized but bigger than a human," researcher Pablo Navarro Lorbes told The Sun.
"They could probably chase down Usain Bolt, unfortunately for him."
Bolt would still have a better chance than the average person though.
According to , the average man aged between 20 and 40 can only do about 5.9mph, while for women it's about 5mph.
Footprints were the main focus of the study - which is published in the Nature journal - but it had to be compared with loads of data and approaches by other paleontologists.
Theropods would probably have been among the fastest dinosaurs in their time but there are other groups that could run very fast, including their prey.
They also have nothing on the world's fastest animal, the Cheetah, which can reach speeds of about 60mph.
In other news, Earth had a close call with an asteroid, called 1998 SD9, in October.
NASA has also been busy helping the ISS avoid a possible debris collision by forcing it to swerve 1,000ft.
Last month, the American space agency launched a spacecraft that will ultimately crash into an asteroid 11million miles from Earth next year.
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