Imagining dinosaurs in the flesh is tricky since the prehistoric subjects died out some 65 million years ago, but a new tool is helping to fill out the skeleton of T. rex and one of the largest-known duckbill dinosaurs, among other beasts.
Paleontologists used laser imaging technology called LiDAR for the first time to create 3-D computer models of five dinosaurs, including two of Tyrannosaurus rex, a spiny predator called Acrocanthosaurus atokensis, the ostrich-like Strutiomimum sedens and the plant-eating Edmontosaurus annectens, a hadrosaur or duckbill dinosaur.
via LiveScience- msnbc.com.
HOW do you study several thousand dinosaur footprints spread across 2 kilometres of a soft-rock outcrop at a slant of 60 degrees? Zap them with a laser.
The footprints, at the Fumanya site in the southern Pyrenees in Spain, record the passage of huge long-necked dinosaurs called titanosaurs across a muddy area about 70 million years ago. The problem is that the footprint layer is soft and crumbling, and climbing the steep surface could damage the tracks.
So Phil Manning of the University of Manchester, UK, and his team scanned the surface with LIDAR – a laser technique that maps features in a similar way to radar. The scanner and allied software generated a detailed 3D contour map of the surface and prints (Palaeontology, DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4983.2008.00789.x).
Via: NewScientist
