Imaging technology has revolutionized paleontology, allowing scientists to study fossils that are buried deep in the rock or too small to handle. Two recent studies I was involved with show some of the technology’s potential, including one that discovered a new dinosaur species that loomed over other carnivores it lived alongside hundreds of millions of years ago.
Imaging technology has revolutionized paleontology, allowing scientists to study fossils that are buried deep in the rock or too small to handle. Two recent studies I was involved with show some of the technology’s potential, including one that discovered a new dinosaur species that loomed over other carnivores it lived alongside hundreds of millions of years ago.
In the first study, my colleagues and I investigated an impression of a fossil jawbone that had been described in 1899 only as having come from a possible dinosaur. Because of its age (203 million years old), the specimen had added importance as, potentially, an unusually large early flesh-eating dinosaur.
Dinosaurs originated during the Triassic period, from 252–201 million years ago, but generally the flesh-eating forms remained under 3 meters in length and weighed no more than an alsatian dog. We knew the 1899 specimen, from the late Triassic near Cardiff in south Wales, showed portions of an ancient animal’s jaw and flesh-eating teeth, and could have come from an animal five meters or more in length.
The specimen had not been much studied since 1899 because it consisted only of impressions in the rock. At the time of discovery, the block had been split, revealing an impression of the inside and outside of the mandible, with 16 teeth and tooth sockets. But none of the original bone material remained.
Traditionally, paleontologists would make a cast of the specimen using plaster or some flexible plastic, but such casting could damage the delicate fossil.
