Scientists Launch AI DinoTracker App to Identify Dinosaur Footprints

Scientists have launched DinoTracker, an AI app that identifies dinosaurs from ancient footprints.
The system compares footprint shapes and matches expert classifications about 90% of the time.
Researchers avoided pre-labelled data to reduce long-standing classification errors.
The AI learned from 2,000 unlabelled footprint silhouettes and identified eight key shape features.
These include toe spread, heel position, and ground contact patterns.
Users can upload footprint images and explore similar tracks through the free app.
The study appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The team included scientists from University of Edinburgh and Helmholtz-Zentrum.
The AI supports earlier findings of birdlike dinosaur tracks from the Triassic and Jurassic periods.
Some experts caution that soft ground, not anatomy, may explain the birdlike impressions.