Wired Science

High-Powered X-Rays Take You Inside a Dinosaur's Skull

Paleontologist Nick Fraser knew he had found something special when he unearthed a particular fossil in a Virginia rock quarry. He'd been digging up fossils there for nearly a decade, but this one was different: it seemed to be the remains of a dinosaur he'd never seen before. The only problem was he couldn't tell for sure. The fossil was so deeply embedded in the shale surrounding it that Fraser couldn't extract it without destroying it. After three years of scraping and dusting at the stone but getting nowhere, Fraser hit on a solution: he had it scanned with a high-tech imaging process known as computer tomography.

Computer tomography, or CT, scans are changing the way paleontologists and other scientists view their specimens. Essentially, the process involves a super-high-powered X-ray machine that captures images of narrow slices of objects. Hundreds of those slices are then stacked on top of each other to form a three-dimensional image of the object. The image can be viewed from any angle - including from the inside.

Researchers at the University of Texas in Austin have in the last few years scanned hundreds of fossils, skeletons and pieces of creatures big and small. They've put the resulting images online in a digital library, making highly detailed three-dimensional models of rare items like dinosaur skulls and fossils of extinct animals available to scientists, students and curious web-surfers everywhere for the first time. To top it off, they also have a "printer" that can create three-dimensional wax replicas of any of those images.

Brought to light by a CT scan, Fraser's fossil did indeed turn out to be a previously undiscovered type of long-necked, winged dinosaur. It's one of the most impressive examples yet of how today's technology is changing our understanding of the past.