DinoTracker is a new, free app that uses AI to figure out which dinosaur made a footprint—just from a photo.
Made by teams in Berlin and Edinburgh, it matches expert opinions 90% of the time and a research paper describing it was published this month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
How it works
The app learned from nearly 2,000 real fossil shapes and millions of simulated prints to handle all sorts of footprint quirks.
It looks at things like toe spread, heel position, and weight distribution.
Snap a pic with your phone, upload it, and get instant results.
It has already helped in research
DinoTracker has already helped spot bird-like features in South African footprints that are about 210 million years old, roughly 60 million years older than the earliest-known avian fossils (about 150 million years ago).
As researcher Steve Brusatte puts it, the study offers "an exciting contribution for paleontology and an objective, data-driven way to classify dinosaur footprints - something that has stumped experts for over a century."