Researchers have used a guineafowl to advance their knowledge of how dinosaurs probably walked. More precisely, they used an x-ray machine to record how the bird walked along a track covered in millions of poppy seeds.

Experts from the Royal Veterinary College in London working with colleagues from Brown University used these X-rays to produce a video of the bird walking through a long hollow channel filled with poppy seeds to build a 3D model of the bird's tracks.

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Ancient dinosaur footprints have always been quite a challenge for scientists to study since little is known about the interaction of the animal's foot with the substrate (or the surface where the footprint is made) that can be anything from sand, clay or mud. A substrate can also be hard or flat, porous and even cause deformities.

Footprints on any soft substrate can be well preserved, however. But they can also be just as complex to study since the process involves the foot of the creature sinking deeper than it should thus producing an inaccurate idea of the size or type of dinosaur that made it.

Researchers Peter Falkingham and Stephen Gatesy used the guineafowl to stand in for a similar sized dinosaur called Corvipes lacertoideus that apparently left some tracks on sediment some 250 million years ago in northeastern U.S.A.

Researchers could have chosen any kind of bird species but admitted their choice of the  guinea fowl was random. Birds are considered direct descendants of dinosaurs.

According to Falkingham, the study's lead author, the guineafowl just happened to be both available at the time and fitted perfectly into the X-ray machine.

As the researchers filled a long trough with poppy seeds to simulate sand, X-ray video equipment captured images of the bird's body and skeletal system, along with the movement of the seeds as the bird walked through them.

This video is the first time the process of making dinosaur footprints were captured, said Falkingham.

Although the bird left unremarkable footprints on the surface of the seeds, visible prints half an inch below the surface were seen on the X-ray images. These footprints do not represent the exact shape of the bird's feet since it spread its toes when it stepped forward.

Scientists now have a clearer idea how this pattern created well preserved dinosaur tracks. The findings can help paleontologists reconstruct the ancient movement of dinosaurs.

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