Phys.org has a story about the dinosaur renaissance that started about 50 years ago. Before the research that led to the revolution in dinosaur science, dinosaurs were thought to dumb, slow, lumbering animals that went extinct because mammals were faster and smarter. Bone histology, birds as dinosaurs, feathers, lifespan, diet, and behavior are just a few of the advances we now understand to a greater extent than before the change in view that led to the renaissance.

The study of dinosaurs has been through a revolution in recent decades. The story began half a century ago, when Robert McNeill Alexander, a professor of zoology at the University of Leeds, showed how the speed of an animal could be calculated from the spacing of its footprints and its body size.

This formula worked both for modern and extinct animals and so, for the first time, the speed of a dinosaur could be estimated from a fossilized trackway. Alexander calculated speeds for different dinosaurs of between 1.0 and 3.6 meters per second (up to 13kmh)—rather slower than others had guessed.

In the 1970s, dinosaurs were becoming exciting again after years of being treated as lumbering failures. Termed the “dinosaur renaissance,” American paleontologists Robert Bakker and John Ostrom were among those transforming understanding by arguing that dinosaurs were active, possibly warm-blooded, and that they included the ancestors of birds. Remarkable fossils of feathered dinosaurs from China, found from 1996 onward, cemented this idea.

A good example of the new techniques in paleontology is the research into the bite force of Tyrannosaurus rex.