ROWE, TIMOTHY, Department of Geological Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX

ABSTRACT: New Applications of Digital Imagery and CD-ROM For Paleontology

High resolution computed tomographic imaging can now achieve resolutions of 20 microns, and offers a potentially revolutionary technology for studying the 3-dimensional morphology of hard tissues in fossil and recent organisms at all scales of size. As a test of this technology, I scanned a specimen of the skull of Thrinaxodon liorhinus, a Triassic relative of living mammals. This taxon was previously studied using more conventional, destructive serial grinding techniques. The scanner provided 154 transverse, 25 sagittal, and 367 coronal consecutive serial sections of this small skull. All sections were made in 200 micron-thick slices, replicating or exceeding the level of detail achieved by earlier studies. Virtually all previously recognized structures are visible in the CT imagery. Using Animator pro software, these sections were organized into 9 animations that `flip' through the whole skull and through close-up views of the braincase and snout. All of the individual slices were assembled into hyper-linked stacks for convenient slice by slice examination, using Media Master software for PC computers. The entire data set, which comprises nearly 500 megabytes, was mastered onto CD-ROM and published by the University of Texas Press. Using this disc requires an MS-DOS computer with a VGA graphics card and color monitor. The combination of CT imagery and CD-ROM is an enormously powerful new tool for studying and publishing data on the detailed morphology of organic hard tissues.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90987©1993 AAPG Annual Convention, New Orleans, Louisiana, April 25-28, 1993.