An international team of researchers has devised a futuristic tool to examine the footprints left by dinosaurs in our ancient past. The AI-powered app, Dinotracker, can identify dinosaur footprints in moments.
The research comes from a joint project by the Helmholtz-Zentrum research center in Berlin and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published the paper on Monday.
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Identifying a dinosaur species from a footprint isn't always easy. The footprint is hundreds of millions of years old, often preserved in layers of rock that have shifted over the eons since the track was laid.
Also, we still have a lot to learn about dinosaurs, and it's not always clear which species left a footprint. Subjectivity or bias can come into play when identifying them, and scientists don't always agree with the results.
Gregor Hartmann of Helmholtz-Zentrum, who led the project, told CNET that the research team sought to remove this propensity from the identification process by developing an algorithm that could be neutral.
"We bring a mathematical, unbiased point of view to the table to assist human experts in interpreting the data," Hartmann said.
Researchers trained the algorithm on thousands of real fossil footprints, as well as millions of simulated versions that could recreate "natural distortions such as compression and shifting edges."
How AI is being used on dinosaur tracks
The system was trained to focus on eight major characteristics of dinosaur footprints, including the width of the toes, the position of the heel, the surface area of the foot that contacted the ground and the weight distribution across the foot.
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