Scientists have been wondering for years which dinosaur could run the fastest. Now, new simulation models are offering a fresh look at dinosaur speed.
This renewed interest has roots in a major discovery from 1964, when paleontologist John Ostrom and his team uncovered Deinonychus—a dinosaur with a lightweight body, long claws, and strong legs. Its features challenged the long-held image of dinosaurs as sluggish reptiles and instead pointed to an active, fast-moving predator.
This discovery helped launch what scientists call the “dinosaur renaissance,” a major shift in how experts understood dinosaur behavior. Instead of slow-moving reptiles, some dinosaurs began to be seen as fast, smart, and built for speed.
To figure out which dinosaur was the fastest, researchers turned to the study of movement. In the 1970s, British zoologist Robert McNeill Alexander began studying how animals move by combining biology with physics. He discovered that animals with longer legs usually take longer steps and can move faster. He applied this idea to fossil tracks to estimate the speed of extinct dinosaurs.
For years, scientists have measured the distance between dinosaur footprints and compared that to fossil leg bones to guess how fast they moved.
But experts say this method has limits. Susannah Maidment, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London, said the data isn’t always reliable. One reason is that scientists don’t know if the dinosaur was walking or running when it made those tracks.
Eugenia Gold, a paleontologist at Suffolk University in Boston, MA, added that the best footprints are often found in soft ground, like mud. “But if you’ve ever tried to run through mud, you know that you are probably not running at your full speed.”
To get better results, William Sellers, a scientist at the University of Manchester, used computers and digital models to study how dinosaurs may have moved. He created 3D skeletons and added estimates of muscle size and weight. This allowed him to simulate how the animals might have walked or run.
Sellers tested five meat-eating dinosaurs: Tyrannosaurus rex, Velociraptor, Allosaurus, Dilophosaurus, and Compsognathus. His results showed that Compsognathus was likely the fastest, reaching nearly 40 miles per hour. Velociraptor came in second at about 24 miles per hour. The slowest was T. rex, which likely moved around 18 miles per hour due to its heavy body. Running at higher speeds might have caused its bones to break.
Even so, Sellers noted that building each model takes six months to a year. “And the thing that really takes a lot of time is putting the muscles on. And so it takes six months to a year to actually create one of these things,” he said.
Since not all dinosaurs have been modeled, the question remains partly open. But for now, one answer might come from the sky.
“If you want a really straightforward, simple answer, the peregrine falcon is the fastest dinosaur,” Gold said. “It dives down through the air. And its fastest speed is 200 mph [322 km/h], and that’s faster than anything can fly or run on or swim on the planet.”
