Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/14320
n n n n Scanning Digital technology holds the key to advancing the study of dinosaurs, starting with a well-known T. rex Tere are many challenges to studying the biol- ogy of dinosaurs. Teir skeletons are extremely fragile and, most often, incomplete. Because the bones are fossils, they may be distorted and usu- ally composed of materials that were very differ- ent from what they were made of when living. And, dinosaurs are mainly quite large and physi- cally difficult to study. Yet, so many of the questions researchers need answers to are tied up in the bones and how they fit together to make skeletons. Tey include relatively simple matters, such as how much dinosaurs weighed, what they looked like fleshed out, how they moved, and even what their basic posture was. Tese questions must be answered before paleontologists can progress to addressing more complex problems. So, how do you mini- mize or circumvent the challenges and start an- swering these basic questions? Technology holds many of the answers. Tese were problems facing Peter Makovicky, dinosaur curator and chair of the Department of Geology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. He wanted to start detailed biological studies of Sue, the Tyrannosaurus rex, as part of the museum’s celebration of the 10th anniversary of Sue’s unveiling. Makovicky turned to us—Ralph Chapman and Linda Deck (Deck & Chap- man LLC and New Mexico Virtualization of Los Alamos, New Mexico) and Art Andersen (Virtual Surfaces of Mt. Prospect, Illinois)— because we created the first real digital dino- saur during the 1990s based on the Smithson- ian Institution’s Triceratops skeleton (see “No Bones About It,” February 2001). Chapman and Deck have continued ex- ploring the usefulness of 3D technology for museums since that project, and Andersen went on to apply 3D scanning technology to the study of the mummified duck-billed dino- saur known as Leonardo (see “Dino Might,” July 2009) as well as many other 3D projects. Sue presented all the classic challenges as- sociated with dinosaur skeletons, magnified 50 July 2010 Peter Makovicky (right) of the Chicago Field Museum, along with a team of scanning specialists, hold a research-grade cast of a femur from Sue, the museum’s T. rex, before CT- scanning it in order to make a high-res 3D model.