This AI app can identify dinosaur footprints with 90% accuracy
What's the story
A team of researchers has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) app, DinoTracker, that can analyze dinosaur footprints. The innovative tool works by analyzing the shape of a footprint and matching it to other known imprints. The process was discussed in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Professor Steve Brusatte from the University of Edinburgh and his colleagues.
Innovative methodology
DinoTracker's unique approach
Unlike previous AI systems that learned from labeled footprints, the team behind DinoTracker fed their system with 2,000 unlabeled silhouette imprints. The AI then determined how similar or different these imprints were by analyzing a range of features it identified as meaningful. These eight features reflected variations in the shapes of the imprints, such as toe spread, ground contact area, and heel position.
User interaction
A tool for exploring dinosaur footprints
The researchers transformed their AI system into a free app called DinoTracker. The app lets users upload a footprint silhouette, discover seven similar ones, and manipulate the original to see how variations in the eight features can affect similarity. This interactive feature makes it easier for users to understand how different factors influence footprint classification and identification.
Accuracy assessment
Accuracy and implications for paleontology
DinoTracker's AI system matches human expert classification about 90% of the time, provided factors like the material footprints were made in and their age match scientific hypotheses. The tool also supported previous paleontological findings that a set of Triassic and early Jurassic footprints are strikingly birdlike despite being 60 million years older than the oldest known bird skeletons.
Evolutionary implications
DinoTracker's findings challenge traditional views on bird evolution
The birdlike tracks could mean that birds have a much older, deeper ancestry than previously thought, tens of millions of years earlier than what was believed. However, Professor Brusatte suspects these tracks were made by meat-eating dinosaurs with very birdlike feet, maybe their ancestors but not true birds. This suggests that the origins of avian characteristics may be more complex than previously understood.