For the first time, researchers successfully captured CT images of an entire wooly mammoth tusk, according to a new « Images in Radiology » article published in the journal Radiology. Researchers were able to do a full scan of the tusk in its entirety—or in toto—using a newer clinical CT scanner. The new technology allows for large-scale imaging without having to do multiple partial scans.
August 9, 2022
For the first time, researchers successfully captured CT images of an entire wooly mammoth tusk, according to a new « Images in Radiology » article published in the journal Radiology. Researchers were able to do a full scan of the tusk in its entirety—or in toto—using a newer clinical CT scanner. The new technology allows for large-scale imaging without having to do multiple partial scans.
« Working with precious fossils is a challenge since it is important not to destroy or harm the specimen, » said the article’s senior author, Tilo Niemann, M.D., head of CT, and cardiac and thoracic radiology in the Department of Radiology at Kantonsspital Baden in Baden, Switzerland. « Even if there exist various imaging techniques to evaluate the internal structure, it was not possible to scan a whole tusk in toto without the need for fragmentation or at least having to do multiple scans that then had to be painstakingly assembled. »
The extinct wooly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) was the size of a modern-day African elephant and lived throughout Eurasia and North America. Most of the wooly mammoths went extinct with the conclusion of the last Ice Age, and the last specimens lived approximately 6,000 years ago.
