Scientists launch AI app to help ID dinosaur footprints

Experts have created an app that uses artificial intelligence to identify dinosaurs from the footprints left behind tens of millions of years ago.

- Nicola Davis

"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 coauthor 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."

Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Brusatte and colleagues report how previous AI systems based their learning on footprints that had already been labelled as having been made by particular types of dinosaur.

But, the team note, if those identifications are incorrect then the AI system will also be flawed.