The digital skeleton took into account the location (and layering) of muscles and joints when calculating the animal's gait and speed.
Many paleontologists had assumed that sauropods walked with a gait similar to elephants.But a study published earlier this year by British scientists challenged that assumption, arguing that the sauropod frame was too wide to maintain balance with such a gait.
As for the elephant, its gait was actually the opposite of a sauropod.
Elephants move laterally, but if sauropods walked that way, there would be too much swaying from side to side for stable locomotion.
Instead, the sauropods likely walked with a diagonal gait, with the front foot touching the ground just before the opposite hind foot.