Dinosaur footprints are notoriously tricky to identify, but AI got the recreational fossil hunters covered. Scientists have launched the AI-based DinoTracker app that can identify dinosaur footprints left tens of millions of years ago. Previous AI systems based their learning on labelled dinosaur footprints, but Brusatte argues that if any identification is incorrect, the AI system will also have flaws. DinoTracker uses a different approach.
“When we find a dinosaur footprint, we try to do the Cinderella thing and find the foot that matches the slipper,” said Prof Steve Brusatte, a co-author of the work, from the University of Edinburgh. “But it’s not so simple, because the shape of a dinosaur footprint depends not only on the shape of the dinosaur’s foot but also the type of sand or mud it was walking through, and the motion of its foot.”
The main hurdle in ID-ing a dinosaur footprint is that a footprint never appears beside the dinosaur that made it, which makes labelling errors quite possible. Steering away from using previous data to set up their app, Brusatte fed their AI system with 2,000 unlabelled footprint silhouettes. The system then determined the resemblance between the footprints by analyzing 8 features that reflected variations in footprint shape, such as toe spread, heel position, and the amount of ground contact.
The team has turned the system into the free app DinoTracker, where a user can upload a footprint silhouette, compare its similarity to seven other footprints, and manipulate the footprint to see how tweaking the eight features affects which other footprints it most resembles.
Currently, experts tally factors like the nature of the material in which the footprints were made and their age, with the scientific hypothesis. However, this newly developed system clustered prints with the ones expected from classifications made by experts 90% of the time. Among many other findings, the AI system supported what paleontologists had previously noticed. Some Triassic and early Jurassic footprints were birdlike, despite being 60 million years older than the oldest bird fossil, Archeopteryx.
The data support a school of thought that avians have much deeper ancestry, spanning tens of millions of years. Still, the evidence is not concrete, as carnivorous dinosaurs might have made the imprints with very birdlike feet. They might be bird ancestors, but not actual birds. As for now, the chicken-or-egg debate is for another day; now is the time to enjoy finding dinosaur footprints.
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