Past forward: Mangroves, reefs and Archaeopteryx?

The present can be a key to the past. This is something that the 18th Century Scottish Geologist James Hutton raised when viewing the surficial processes that have sculpted the land-shapes of the United Kingdom. This idea was refined and liberally applied by the famous 19th Century geologist Charles Lyell whose pivotal book, Principles of Geology, accompanied a young Charles Darwin on his voyage of discovery. This basic assumption that many palaeontologists apply to the fossil record relies on the uniformity of natural and physical laws that have governed our planet in both the past and present. This principle of 'uniformitarianism' often drive my colleagues and I to study the tissues, behavior, environments and ecology of living species, so that we may better understand the same in extinct organisms.

This week, I find myself on Grand Cayman…I just pinched myself…and yes, I am still sat on Grand Cayman. I am here to explore some of the most pristine carbonate environments in this corner of the world, so that I might better understand similar environments that I often sample from the fossil record. The submarine ridge that supports the Cayman Islands defines its geology, topography, as well as the rich environments that support a diverse flora and fauna. The carbonate shelf that fringes the islands support prolific coral reef communities while the lagoons and mangrove swamps inland support a vibrant terrestrial community. It is times like this that I realize how little we have to work with when reconstructing ancient communities, of which a fossil assemblage only represents but a fraction of the extinct ecosystem.

Stingrays at Stingray City (Grand Cayman) Image courtesy of Jim 'Rayman' Gobetz

The geological record of life also has a nasty habit of time-averaging samples, so that a fossil assemblage might represent hundreds or even thousands of years, albeit in a single unit of lithified sediment (rock). At the same time, the subtle variation in species and their distribution through time and space can be blurred due to the cumulative affects of taphonomic processes acting upon and concentrating, filtering and/or refining a fossil assemblage…all this and more adding to the difficulties of unpicking the past for palaeontologists. Hopefully, my wading through lagoons, swimming with stingrays, trekking through mangrove swamps and diving into reef systems will provide me with some new insights on this particular fraction of life on Earth…and not a dinosaur in sight! However, I am VERY keen to see if a seabird manages to meet a sticky end in one of the back-bay hypersaline lagoons…maybe a gentle echo of similar environments and taphonomic processes that preserved its distant Jurassic ancestor Archaeopteryx. I am sure that James Hutton would approve.

Digital Dinosaurs in Deutschland!

Ich bin ein Berliner...well, at least for these past few days!

The Digital Fossils meeting has just ended its three day meeting held in the Museum fur Naturkunde in Berlin, organised by Heinrich Mallison...and what a splendid meeting! It seems that fossils have truly made their way into the 21st Century.

In the past ten years a series of image acquisition developments have dramatically increased the rate, size and format of data recoverable from fossils. The elegant simplicity of a line drawing often tried to capture the complex three-dimensional (3D) nuances of a fossil with the hindering constraints of a two-dimensional (2D) medium. Photography was rapidly adopted as a cost-affective medium from which multiple images might project the complexities of form. This simple and economic approach has now been heavily augmented by 3D photogrammetric techniques. These basic starting-points for data acquisition are still used in the acquisition of morphological data in palaeontology and are now augmented with the advances being made in photogrammetry. The digital revolution in photography has almost certainly advanced the ease of data acquisition, but increasing file size and sheer numbers have sunk many ‘standard’ 500 megabyte hard drives. External drives of 1-4 terabytes have become the norm as sinks for such digital photograph databases, but larger digital files are now being generated by a host of new imaging techniques being applied to the study and analysis of fossil samples.

In addition to photogrammetry, 3D surface scanners (hand scanners to LiDAR), X-Ray Computed Tomography (both medical grade to Synchrotron) and Synchrotron Rapid Scanning X-Ray Fluorescence (SRS-XRF) are being used from small scale (nanometers) to vast scales (several square miles of digital outcrop model). As resolution increases, combined with colour channel photogrammetric data applied to point clouds, so too do the file sizes. Once laptop-sized manageable datasets have to migrate to multicore workstations or high-performance computing to resolve visualization solutions. The 3D X-Ray Computed Tomography data generated by medical imaging systems has on the whole been very manageable, but with the advent of X-Ray microtomography, the data sets have become vast and complex to open, manipulate and store.

Now that palaeontologists have also started collecting data using synchrotron light sources around the world, initially acquiring high-resolution tomography data. The tiniest fossil, when scanned in 3D at nano-resolution yields data sets inversely proportional to their size. However, the potential for synchrotron-based imaging includes SRS-XRF. In the last three years, this synchrotron-based chemical imaging technique has provided high-resolution 2D elemental maps of the chemistry of fossils and their embedding matrix (Figure 1b). SRS-XRF can scan at resolutions from 100-2 microns, with high sensitivity (ppm) and an experimental stage that can take samples up to 1 metre², yielding vast scan files. The next logical steps for the synchrotron-based imaging is to take the 2D SRS-XRF and expand the data further to allow the recovery of 3D (sub-surface) chemical information. The potential of Synchrotron K-edge subtraction tomography/fluorescence is about to be applied to palaeontological samples for the first time. The technique will recover 3D elemental data from within a fossil, yielding valuable information on the taphonomy and possibly identifying the presence of remnant biomarkers that may lay hidden with a fossil. 

The University of Manchester Palaeontology Research Group is now starting to develope software solutions to the recovery, processing and management of data generated using many of the above techniques. It has not been possible to generate a ’one-size’ fits all solution, given the diverse types of data being generated. However, the team is now tackling the storage and management of data using a mutliscale solutions approach. However the question still remains, ‘Are we ‘byting’ off more data than we can chew?’

Waddling with Weighty Dinosaurs

The past few weeks have been a little busy. After spending much of August surveying, mapping and digging at our excavation site in South Dakota, the really hard work begins now! The busy weeks that followed have entailed shipping a few tonnes of dinosaur from South Dakota to New York, some lectures in Utah and a visit to New York....to deliver the more delicate finds from our Hell Creek excavation sites.

A weathered chevron bone (that hang between and beneath tail vertebrae) from a predatory dinosaur.

Preparing dinosaur bones for shipping is akin to squeezing a large elephant into a phone box along with vast quantities of bubble-wrap, foam and plenty of optimism...as the crate that looked so cavernous 5 minutes ago shrinks before your very eyes. This is possibly the only time when your precious dinosaur bones appear too large, as normally the 'fishermen's tale' principle makes your bones shrink prior to exhibition, public lecture or any time when you need to impress a potential funder...palaeontologists so love to hear, 'Oh, I thought dinosaurs were bigger?' or 'Is this a small one'...when you hand over a vertebra from a 40 foot predator.  I now simply shrug my shoulders and say, 'I'm sure they were bigger when I packed them?' or 'Its OK, the bones are just shy...deep-down they are huge'.

Tail (caudal) vertebra of Tyrannosaurus rex...now just think about your own relatively tiny vertebra!

A single bone can often cloak the size of a vast dinosaur. One tail vertebra from the distal-most part of a sauropod tale might well compare in size to a regular can of Red Bull, but this is but a small echo of a vast skeleton that was once attached to ten's of thousands of pounds of dynamic flesh. It is the same way you might look at the skeleton of an elephant or walrus in a museum and ponder on how big the animal might have looked in life. It is only when you are stood right next to a living elephant that you truly comprehend their sheer bulk and size. This often makes me think on how much meat once hung on the vast bones of a single sauropod dinosaur and how long it might have taken to dine your way through such an enormous feast. While bigger predators would have no doubt taken their fill of fallen prey, as is often evidenced from their shed teeth and the gnawed prey bones, it would have been the smallest facets of the community (bugs to bacteria) that ate more than their fair share. The 'recycling' of a fetted mountain of flesh and bone....as yes, even the bones would be reprocessed by members of the community...most dinosaurs and other extinct life stood little chance of making it into the fossil hall of fame...we call the fossil record.

African elephants...be careful!

However, it was clear that an occasional 'leak' existed in the recycling of dinosaurian and other beastly body parts. One that allowed some of our lost world residents to slip through the taphonomic net...taphonomy being the study of burial laws...to be trapped in the sands of time. Again, we should not snort in disbelief at such chance, given the carbon-based economy that drives our planet is a pure function of organic molecules surviving the ravages of time (albeit altered to various stages of hydrocarbon breakdown products). I personally am very grateful for these 'leaks', as it provides me with both fossil fuel and a career!

Its a wonderful thought that our precious prehistoric cargo is slowly waddling its way toward the hallowed halls of the America Museum of Natural History in New York City. Splendid!

Lightning storms, hot goop and getting plastered.

 We arrived on site this morning and the atmosphere was hot and humid, with thunderheads looming on the horizon. Rain in the badlands is a problem…but lightening can be life-threatening. We only have a few more days to finish our site survey and remove a few obvious bones that might not make it through the harsh Dakotan winter.

Today we had planned to extract a rather stunning bone, but the lightening storm slowly shifted over us and started to spot the dry dirt with rain. Usually we would turn tail and head for the field vehicle, but we took a gamble and hunkered down under a butte. Thankfully the storm passed over and we could head-off to get plastered. The single tibia that stuck proud of a channel sand had a stunning surface texture and a possible bite mark from a large predator. The removal procedure involved plaster, bandages, copious amounts of water and a bucket. Carl Mehling pointed out that we were reenacting a scene that has been played-out countless times in the Badlands. The temperature was rising at our site and Carl whipped-out his multipurpose tool to open the plaster bag to start the field-jacketing process.

The bone we intended to collect still lay in the wall of the butte. The prior day we had completely exposed it, and identified it as being a large tibia from an Edmontosaurus. We had named the specimen Phindy, as both Jennifer Anne (aka Indy) and I had discovered the bone earlier in the week. Carl was clearly impressed by Phindy’s huge bone.

We soon got down to business and started encasing the bone in a field jacket for extraction. I checked that the initial bandage jacket had dried from the day before. It was nice and hard, so I could get to work on the bone. We mixed-up a batch of plaster, Carl pouring water into the bucket…as I poured plaster into the mix. The goopy mix soon started to get hot and I worked the mixture until it was nice and smooth, indicating it was nearly ready to smother the bone with. This outer jacket would provide the final protection for the bone for its long journey from the Badlands of South Dakota to New York City.

As I smoothed the mix over the shaft of the bone, Carl and Indy watched and offered ‘helpful’ words of encouragement….that might alter the rating of this blog so forgive there omission. The goop started getting hot, as the exothermic mix began to harden around the bone. I had to keep moving the mixture over the bone, keeping it smooth and even as it hardened.

Tomorrow we will be able to safely remove this awesome bone from its 65 million year old Hell Creek tomb.

Hot, Hot, Hot...and getting hotter!

This is an overdue blog. I have been in the field for over a week and not had time to write my blog. That said, I have had time to mark exam papers, submit a paper, start a new grant and not sleep...tonight being a great example! However, the fieldwork has been most productive with several excellent fossils being plucked from the ground, by a VERY reduced field crew...in size, but not in enthusiasm! The reason for this years field crew being so small...well, we have been mapping the corners of our BLM sections. This is hugely important, as it constrains how and where we will get access to our excavation sites next year...as this is when we intend to expand our crew and run the full dig!

A new site that has surprised us with some rather nice fossil bone!

We are also shipping some of the giant hadrosaur and ceratopsian bones back to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) that we excavated last year. The field-jacketed bones require careful packing in a vast wooden crate, that we will send ahead of us to New York at the end of this week. One of the AMNH Paleontology collections folks (Carl Mehling) is also with us in the field, as the 'Night at the Museum' museum is the designated federal repository for all the bones, teeth, scales and sundry that we have been extracting from the productive Late Cretaceous loins of the Hell Creek Formation. I think Carl is having fun....but the heat is baking him daily...which is clearly not much fun for him, as we hear many a groan and sighs, in-between his gasps at fossil delights.

Dr Victoria Egerton (right) and Dr Bill Sellers (left) work their way through a pond deposit in the Hell Creek Fm.

The bugs, snakes, and beasties have been pretty good this year...I am particularly happy about this, as prior years have had me donating large quantities of blood to the local mosquito population. We have only bumped into one rattle snake and that was yesterday, and yes, it made me jump high in the air and got my heart racing to the amusement of all. Our biggest problem at the moment is heat. Today it was around 100 degrees fahrenheit (this being nearly 38 C), making the treks between sites and any lifting very hard and hot work. Tomorrow (which I might add is already here, as it is 2am local time) will be even hotter, with a promised high of 100 degrees fahrenheit (that is a mind-addling 43 C). We are currently drinking 4-6 litres of fluids a day, but that will significantly rise tomorrow. When the ambient temperature is greater than your body temperature, you body and mind start to do strange things. The most basic tasks become ordeals, so the thought of lifting a 100 lb field jacket the mile or so a from our site to transport...fills me with joy! What should only take 20 minutes, ends up being a simmering 1-2 hour slog.

Lets just hope I do not meet this beastie in-person...this was a skin moult on our dig site....gulp!

Preparing to dig some fossil fuel!

Fossils literally fuel the science of palaeontology. This beautifully preserved resource allows us to touch deep into the past lives of plants and animals. The way we excavate, prepare, conserve and curate fossils is changing. As we begin to undertand more about the importance of the chemical ghosts lurking in fossils (see my earlier posts on our synchrotron-based imaging work). We have realised that by handling, gluing and conserving fossils, we might inadvertently be damaging important chemical sentences that tell stories of past biology, preservation and environments.

This year, I shall mainly be wearing rubber in the field...of the latex glove variety! My plastic sample bags will be replaced with glass vials and autoclaved aluminium foil (when chemical samples are sought). While this is impractical for whole skeletons, there is always sufficient material to collect as smaller samples.

A major drawback of my new field 'wardrobe'...latex gloves in 100+ Fahrenheit will not be much fun!

Hmm, that’s funny…

This is not a great time to be writing grants for palaeontology or for that matter, any other fields of science. Writing grants is something I seem to be doing plenty of these past few years. However, funding seems a tad thin on the ground currently... especially when studying things beneath it... the ground that is. In the last few years I have spent much time justifying to those who ask, the funding that I receive to support the research that we undertake. I am often asked, ‘what is the relevance of your [my] work to everyday life?’ What might surprise many of you to hear is that this is a fair question to ask for all science.

Possibly the toughest thing to explain to any potential funder or to those who ask that wonderfully simple question ‘Why?’ is the potential for discoveries that one has not yet made. While research might offer to solve a simple equation, refine our knowledge of a missing link or maybe resolve a complex interaction of an enzyme that regulates a biosynthetic pathway; we still have to 'estimate' our outcomes. Some results might be predicted correctly (but still need repeating to be considered science), whilst others may yield tangential results offering more questions than answers. In many cases these new questions had not been thought of before, until that particular new avenue, technique or result transpired. The reality of almost all research is that scientists are looking for answers, but can rarely predict the absolute final outcomes of an experiment or line of research. This is why many key areas of science still require funding, as the answers generated always breed new questions, which could not be asked without the hindsight of discovery. A line of new questions can often be worth more than a volume of elegant answers. It might be fair to say that science rarely originates from a linear process of thought and experimentation, but more from an evolutionary process of chance and dare I say...luck. As the great Isaac Asimov once said, 'The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'

Such serendipitous science is difficult for funding agencies to predict, evaluate and judge… the same could be said for the scientists who seek the funding. The assessment of an application for funds can only be based upon the scientific merit of a proposed research programme, this supported by the track record and/or prior outputs of the scientists applying for funds. However, when the funding ‘pool’ becomes shallow, the criterion for assessment often tightens and then 'core' areas of science are favored above more 'blue-skies' disciplines (a term that many scientists hate!). This is usually tough on research areas close to my heart...such as palaeontology.

So, what is the point I am trying to make in this posting...well, while palaeontology is firmly anchored in the past, the outputs from such antediluvian research extends to understanding the burial of waste (both biological and nuclear) in deep time through to the internal force environment of bones (both extant and extinct), not to mention the potential for using extinct life form in future design (palaeo-biomimetics)...and there are many more outputs that are to numerous to recount. My point is simple; it was difficult to predict the tangential developments that palaeontology research has already made...let alone the future research and indirect spin-offs that might be generated from this wonderfully multidisciplinary field. One thing is very clear; the fossil record provides unique hindsight to the processes and patterns of life through deep time. Climate change, extinction events, disease and famine have left their indelible mark on the fossil record…it would be useful for science to keep unpicking such information, so we might better understand comparable events impacting life on Earth today…

…so, I had better finish writing the three grants that currently sit on my desktop.

The Palaeontologists: An Adventure with Scientists

Some of you might have recently watch Nick Park's latest animated movie at the cinema, The Pirates: An adventure with Scientists. The basic plot has a pirate captain with his trusty Dodo for his parrot...in the same vain that Manuel on Fawlty Towers had  pet hamster (aka, the rat). The Dodo is recognised by Chales Darwin, who then proceeds to capture the said flightless bird...thought to be the last of its kind. Queen Victoria also enters the chase, but is intent on broiling and eating the said beastie...that is the Dodo and not Darwin. Darwin's goal was simpler, to display his beloved prize at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition, an event that has been running since before the real Darwin plucked his first pigeon. A week after we completed our own exhibition at the Royal Society, has given time for the team to reflect on the splendid event.

Roy, Phil, Pete, Bart, Holly & Victoria at the Royal Society...with a slightly dead bird!

The exhibit that we built for the Royal Society reviewed our work on the synchrotron-based imaging of pigment in the fossil record...sadly not a Dodo. However, much of our work has focussed on unpicking the plumage patterns and pigments of primitive birds from the Jurassic (Archaeopteryx) and Cretaceous (Confuciusornis and Gansus). The techniques that we deploy have enabled us to identify and define key chemical biomarkers for pigments that domiate plumage, skin and hair colour...not to mention many other tissue types in the animal and plant kingdoms.

Like many free public exhibitions, the Royal Society Summer Exhibition was busy from the minute the doors opened each morning at 10am till the last punter was gently persuaded to leave the premises at 9pm. We realised that our stand attracted attention both from the science it portrayed but also from the objects we displayed...fossils are simply beautiful and ours were no exception to this rule. Every time I see or touch a fossil, it transports me back in time to the multiple 'worlds' that have evolved, waxed and waned through the history of life on Earth. Fossils provide critical insight to the evolution of life on Earth, but it is their residual chemistry that holds so much more information on their biology and preservation environments.

The long standing paradigm that explained the preservation of plant or animal tissues was governed by mineralisation. Fossils were inert shells, long devoid of life. The resultant fossil was thought a mere echo of the original tissues, with little thought being given to the preservation of original (endogenous) elements and compounds that were metabolised and constructed when the tissue was still alive. The analytical techniques being applied to palaeontology over the last 10 years have seen the fragility of this paradigm. Our work presented at the Royal Society Exhibition surprised many visitors that we could resolve biological compounds from 120 million year old birds...first synthesised by life in the early Cretaceous, but imaged by us in the 21st Century. It was fun to point out to visitors at the exhibit that we are quite willing to accept the preservation of organic molecules that fuel our world today...hydrocarbons can be considered as simple leaks in the carbon cycle...as are fossils.

As the team and I work in the beam hutch at the Diamond synchrotron today, we continue to tease the very molecules of life from the sands of time. This is no easy task and can only be achieved using 21st Century technology...but hopefully, we will get a chance to exhibit of latest findings at future public exhibitions that show how beautiful science can be....even without the aid of a Dodo!

Diamond shines brighter than a million suns....

Diamond is the UK's newest synchrotron radiation lightsource. This is where the Manchester team finds itself this week, working at beam-line i18...once again, bathing fossils with intense synchrotron light. The experiment will take us through the weekend and into the beginning of next week...once again we step into the world of sleep depravation, no sunlight (but that is normal, as we are in the UK). We finally got here last night...or should I say, this morning...as we pulled into the facility accommodation at 3am, after leaving Manchester a little later than planned. This is a rather busy time of year.

Our beam hutch, where the experiment takes place, is relatively huge, when compared to many such facilities. We now have to learn how to navigate the multitude of buttons, levers, and shutters that operate the experimental station. All good fun...but hard when sleep-deprived. The experimental hutch is so large, we have to check it for any hidden people or minor continents before we shut the 'barn-door' on any experiment.

Once the experimental hutch is sealed, interlocked and safe, we can then open-up the shutter that permits intense X-rays to flood our sample. If light were water, this is akin to the Pacific Ocean being blasted with some 'Star-Trek-like' force through a pinhole. The resultant beam excites the electronic shells of each atom with which it interacts...en-LIGHTNING us with a fluorescent yield that is diagnostic to each element. This is when we start watching, line by line, as an image slowly starts to form on the screen...in true Rolf Harris style, we all ask 'Do you know what it is yet?'... as we scan each 40 micron slice over the fossil. The distinct elemental signature of each sample tells a wonderful story of life, biosynthetic pathways, burial, preservation and above all chemistry. This story can only be unpicked using such a vast resource as Diamond.

As the experiment begins to run, we all wonder what new insight the results might provide into our world of Applied Palaeontology and Chemical Ghosts...

Dinosaurs are sexy!

Yes, its official...dinosaurs are sexy! This past week at the Royal Society has been crazy...in a very positive sort of way. It seems the public really cannot get enough of matters paleontological, especially when peppered with a liberal dose of particle physics. We did not even need a 'God Particle' on our 'higgs-boson-free' exhibit to convince kids that dinosaurs & particle physics were cool...and the their decedents the birds are even cooler.

Quentin Cooper of Radio 4's Material World dropped by our exhibit. You can hear our interview on this link that took place on the 5th of July. As you will hear...we were very, very busy! By the end of the week, our feet ached and our voices were mere whispers. It is quite possible that we achieved our goal of explaining to kids that palaeontology is about more than just a bunch of bearded folks sat at the bottom of a muddy hole, playing with fossil bones...although this may well be a fair description of me in a few weeks time. Our exhibit owes its design and production to Dr Victoria Egerton, who worked closely with me on this fun project. We hope to tour this exhibit in the future...so if you have a science fair or festival that fancies some relativistic fossils, drop me a line.

After rushing back to Manchester on Sunday evening through the UK Summer monsoon, we arrived in a rain-drenched Manchester...but the same can be said for most of the UK this year. It has rained so hard, the hose-pipe ban has been lifted...so we can all happily water our gardens this week...thats if they have not been washed away already.

I hope to broadcast a lecture on this blog later this week. One I intend to film at the spanking new Diamond Synchrotron Lightsource, near Oxford. This splendid facility is opening its doors to the Manchester team later this week, as we have some rather awesome fossils to gently tweak with a light brighter than a million suns. All in a days work!

Chemical Ghosts...can be FREE!

My book 'Chemical Ghosts' was published today on the iTunes store...as an iBook. If you are so inclined, the said volume can be downloaded for FREE onto your iPad and opened in your iBooks App. This book has allowed me to add photographs, video and text, that explains much about our current research using synchrotron based imaging. Enjoy!

Those of you who find the above book interesting might also want to explore another volume of mine which was originally in print a few years ago, but has also recently migrated to the iTunes Bookstore, this being 'Grave Secrets of Dinosaurs'.

Think of this as blog-post 99.5 as I still hope to have a blog worthy of being 100th in the next few days...

Chemical Ghosts...the iTunes App

As part of the Palaeontology Research Group exhibit for the forthcoming Royal Society Summer Exhibition (Palimpsests, Palaeontology & Particle Physics), we have had our very own App designed! Yes, we have augmented some fossils into wonderful 3D reality, working in collaboration with Studio Liddell (based in Manchester).

You have to download the App from the iTunes Store (we hope it will be available by July 1st) you can see Confuciusornis (the 120 million year old first beaked bird) like you have never seen it before!

The target trigger for the App is the cartoon of Confuciusornis sat on its marble column (above right). After installing the App on your iPad, point the camera at the cartoon...and see what happens next! The front of the postcard is below:

The Exhibit that our team has bult will be on show at The Royal Society, Carlton House Terrace, London, from Tuesday July 3rd. Come and play pinball synchrotron at our exhibit and learn more about the chemical ghosts that lurk inside fossils,

As an aside, this is post number 99....I must think of a suitable 100th post!

Lost in Translation: Mussels, Muscles and Fossils…

 Once again I find myself at the airport. Headed back to the UK after the splendid SR2A meeting in New York and last weeks beam-time at the Stanford Synchrotron. The SR2A meeting went well and many new contacts have been made that will no-doubt shed some new light (possibly of the infrared variety) upon the fossils that the group spend so much time studying.

Speaking of the fossils, these were my assemblage of beasties that had been bathed in X-rays the prior week at SSRL. Travelling with Dinosaurs can be fun…when I say fun, it can lead to some interesting conversations with the airport security officers. I have now learnt to send my shoes and belt first through the X-ray machine, as at least I have a sporting chance of getting my feet and trousers secured before I hear those special words, ‘Bag Check!’ This is partly why I now get to airports 3-4 hours before a flight, as the ritual unpacking, gasps of amazement and repacking can dent your smooth passage onward.

Today was no exception. I knew that the fossils in my bag were both large, dense (plenty of iron sulphide) and obvious…in X-ray, my bag must have looked like a petrified smorgasbord training video in the making for my attentive security officers. Thankfully my shoes and belt did make it through the scanner, just before the X-ray operator scanned my Pelicase of Cretaceous goodies. Here s what happened next…

Security Officer, ‘Sir, is this your bag?’…’Yes, it is mine. I have a pile of fossils in there’ I say this while trying to look as if this is a normal thing to be carrying. ‘Sir, I will have to take your bag over there and take a look’, happily I agree and head to the polished steel tables that will see the dissection of my prehistoric case. ‘Is there ice in here Sir?’….’Ice’ I reply cautiously…’No, why should I have ice in my bag?’.  He starts to open my bag carefully and takes a peak inside, ‘Is there water in here Sir?’…My curiosity is now raised. Had someone surreptitiously squirted water into my bag when I had not been looking? Had one of my antediluvian beasties relieved themselves…somehow take a prehistoric pee? Now beginning to look and feel a little confused I engaged again trying to make sense of the line of questioning, ‘I often transport fossils, and always try to avoid water and even ice’. The security officer looks blankly at me…I decide to push-on... ‘While these are affectively stone, water might still damage them’. The security guard sighed, ‘Sir, I thought you said ‘Mussels’…in an instant the hydration line of questioning made sense, ‘So…these are fossils…what kind’. This is when a small part inside of me quietly groans, as I know that I have to give a micro-lecture on each carefully wrapped package…and my flights departure is getting closer by the minute. The now growing assembly of Security Guards wants to be entertained. Maybe I can count this as part of my public engagement/outreach target for the year? 

Dinosaurs, Physics and the MET Museum of Art?

This week I head to a meeting in New York City. The meeting is being held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The 'MET' to many). The Synchrotron Radiation in Art and Archaeology (SR2A) meeting will explore the latest inroads for synchrotron-based research to these two disciplines...with a few stray palaeontological presentations to boot! My talk will try, in 30 minutes, to highlight some of the advances that the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsouce (SSRL) and University of Manchester team have been working on these past five years or more. 30 minutes is not a long time, so I will have to either speak very quickly or just focus on some of our key findings...I think the latter wins!

The talk is entitled, 'Mapping Prehistoric Ghosts in the Synchrotron' and like many such presentations is credited to key members of the team, myself, Roy Wogelius, Bill Sellers and Uwe Bergmann.

For those of you who want a sneak preview of the talk...here is my abstract:

Detailed chemical analyses have never been completed on any fossil bird, such as the remains of Archaeopteryx and Confuciuornis santus, despite their iconic status. Ideally such analyses would measure and map the chemistry of bone, soft tissue structures, and characterize embedding matrix. Mapping the fossil in situ would place constraints on mass transfer between the enclosing matrix and preserved specimen(s), and therefore aid in distinguishing taphonomic processes from original chemical zonation remnant within the fossils themselves. Conventional nondestructive analytical methods face serious problems in this case and most recent technological advances have been targeted at developing nanometer-scale rather than decimeter-scale capabilities. However, the recent development of Synchrotron Rapid Scanning X-ray Fluorescence (SRS-XRF) at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) now allows large paleontological and archaeological specimens to be non-destructively analyzed and imaged using major, minor, and trace element concentrations. Here we present high-resolution elemental maps covering entire specimens of Archaeopteryx (Thermopolis) and Confuciuornis, along with large sections of the enclosing matrix for Silica, Phosphorus, Sulfur, Chlorine, Calcium, Barium, Manganese, Iron, Zinc, Copper, Bromine, and Lead. As a complement to the elemental maps, spatially resolved point analyses provide quantitative results and have been used to convert mapped intensities to concentrations. Our results unequivocally show that the feathers in the Archaeopteryx are not simply impressions. Several rachises are clearly visible in maps of both phosphorous and sulfur; thus, indicating that feather chemistry has been partially preserved. Furthermore, zinc and copper levels in the bone are similar to concentrations in extant avian species. We therefore conclude that part of the original bone composition is preserved in these critical elements. The SRS-XRF scans of Confuciuornis show that trace metals, such as copper, are present in fossils as organometallic compounds most likely derived from original eumelanin. The distribution of these compounds provides a long-lived biomarker of melanin presence and density within a range of fossilized organisms. Metal zoning patterns may be preserved long after structural evidence (melanosomes) for color has been destroyed. Curation artefacts have also been resolved. Our results show SRS-XRF is a powerful new tool for the study of paleontological and archaeological samples.

It is fun to note that the meeting next week is full! There seems an awful lot of interest in this wonderful field of synchrotron-based imaging...as well there should be.