Thanks to 3-D printing, scientists were able to recreate a chase scene between two dinosaurs that took place 112 million years ago.
According to LiveScience, the snapshot comes from the Cretaceous period thanks to a piece of frozen rock discovered in 1917. When it was re-excavated in 1940, a large chunk was missing and the scientists have now reconstructed the entire 148-foot trackway.
"It's great to get so many stride lengths, so many depths and impressions," study researcher Peter Falkingham, a research fellow at Royal Veterinary College in London, told LiveScience. "There's all this data you can get from an animal moving over quite a long distance.
"It's entirely possible that there are some parts of it in a garage somewhere."
Taken from the Paluxy River Trackway, a site with several more tracks, the fossil depicts a meat-eating therapod chasing a long-necked sauropod. The two-thirds of the fossil that survived are split and one resides in the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the other in the Texas Memorial Museum.
The researchers published their study Wednesday in the journal PLOS One.
"We'll be pulling this into a larger study of the tracks in the area," Falkingham said.
The Paluxy River Trackway is one of the most rich areas for such fossils. Some of the photos of the chase scene fossils, being more than 70 years old, caused the model to come out blurry on the North end. Still, the dinosaurs' toe prints can be seen.
Roland T. Bird excavated the fossil in 1940 and took photos of them. The research team analyze the photos using a technique that showed them where the camera was when the picture was taken, called photogrammetry.
Using the 3-D imaging technology, the researchers overlaid two maps of the dinosaurs' paths to determine which was more accurate. The new 3-D model will allow Falkingham and his team to analyze details like weight distribution, speed and how the dinosaurs were walking.
