Members of NYIT’s Department of Anatomy (from left) at NYIT-Old Westbury: Drs. Jonathan Geisler, Brian Beatty, Matthew Mihlbachler, and Robert Hill.

Technology, Tools, and a Fossil’s Movie Star Moniker

A few decades ago, paleontologists could look inside fossils only by destroying them. Today’s computer tomography (CT) technology allows for a nondestructive peek into a fossil’s composition, detailing spaces within bone that once held soft tissue and blood vessels.

“That’s been transformative,” says Hill, who has used CT scans in his study of crocodiles and mammals. “Within the fossils, you always want a more complete picture of the anatomy and the organism. You can’t know the whole story if you don’t open the book.”

Confocal microscopes and scanning electron microscopy also allow paleontologists to peer ever deeper, illuminating previously hidden fossil features.

Technology’s social aspects have led to a greater sharing of knowledge and data. Tweets from @NYCOMAnatomy provide updates on departmental doings. Recently, Beatty and Mihlbachler launched the online Dental Microwear Image Library containing thousands of magnified images of tooth surfaces that other scientists can use to establish hypotheses about ecological conditions in prehistoric times. They are pushing for greater open-source Internet availability of digital imagery so others have easy access to data.

“That makes the science everything you want science to be—reproducible and falsifiable,” says Hill. “Others can look at the hypothesis you made, do the same experiment, come to the same conclusion, or come to a different conclusion.” 

Beatty’s social media initiatives include his Twitter feed, @Vanderhoofius  (named after an extinct hippo-like marine mammal), three Facebook groups, and a blog.

“I realized that almost every project or paper I do stimulates another idea for another research project,” says Beatty. “It was getting to the point that I was not going to live long enough to get all these things done. I saw the blog as an opportunity to share some ideas with people.”

In addition to high-tech instruments, simple tools like calipers and ordinary microscopes are vital. The bones have stories to tell, says Solounias, and nothing beats paper and pencil to record observations.  

It may take years, however, before the bones speak. Even when chunks of fossil materials are discovered and brought to museums, the information they yield is inaccessible without the help of expert preparers. Using diamond-bladed saws, pneumatic hammers, micro-needles, chemical solvents, and blacklights, they spend months working on a grain-by-grain revelation of rock-encased remains.

Far from exotic locales, paleontologists examine and measure prepared fossil fragments, assigning numerical values for dozens of anatomical features. With a classification method known as cladistics, they compare specimens and determine if they are looking at a known species of an extinct lizard, for example, or a new species that deserves its own clade, or branch, on the fossil tree.

“It’s all based on data,” says Bever. “We use algorithms to determine what trees are the most probable based on data.”

The detailed studies also allow paleontologists to better understand a particular anatomical feature, such as the brain cavity, or the entire anatomical structure of a particular species.   

If the species is new, the paleontologist who describes it first—usually in journal papers containing exhaustive explanations of features—names it. Often, they aim for something clever or unique. Mihlbachler named one new brontothere species Diplacodon gigan after a huge monster that appeared in several Godzilla movies. In honor of his parents, Conrad called a lizard speciesAmmoskius, describing its habitat with a combination of the Greek words for “sandy” and “shade,” his parents’ nicknames. 

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