Categories: General
      Date: Aug 29, 2008
     Title: The MicroScribe and Digital Paleontology

One of the biggest challenges in paleontology is to as faithfully as possible illustrate the subject or species under study.

The MicroScribe and Digital Paleontology                   

By  Otto Geiseman

Revised 09/03/08                                     

      08/29/08

One of the biggest challenges in paleontology is to as faithfully as possible illustrate the subject or species under study.

A mental conceptual 3D model(s) of an extinct species starts to take shape only after extensive research along with routine evaluation and testing of concepts derived from the theories shaped during research.

Fossilized remains of a species anatomy, such as teeth and bones, the hardest body tissues, provide an excellent base line to help formulate concepts of the creature’s possible form, size, shape, motion, how it lived, how it survived, how it ate and more.

However, one of the difficulties in this reconstruction is linking all of the physical 3D bits together. It gets particularly troublesome, and is frequently the case, when there are missing bits in the middle, end and beginning, let alone adding the theoretical bits derived from the research.

How can all this be assembled into a meaningful reconstruction? How do they fit?

One possibility is the creation of sculptures to give  visual form to the distilled research and allows the sculptor, with guidance from the scientist, to create the reconstruction. Interestingly, the as the sculpture gives three dimensional form to the species, new questions and challenges materialize and thus begins yet another interactive and iterative validation process to insure the reconstruction  meets the scientists' design concepts.

Once again  always focused at producing a faithfully illustrated species.

Once the sculpture is completed or a least there is an initial depiction, the Digital Paleontologist can utilize the Immersion MicroScribe to either tactile contour digitize or laser scan the sculpture to create a digital model of the sculpture for virtual modification, testing and interactive use in a variety of modeling, texturing and animation software tools. Once captured you can easily change leg length, joint position, local joint or limb mass, overall body mass, height, width, thickness and more.

Another way is Direct Tactile Digitizing or  laser scanning of fossils or other artifacts which provides direct 3-D capture of the artifact and since all surfaces can be easily acquired even complex surfaces including articular surfaces among others are simply and quickly measured. As a result it becomes even easier to construct and refine ideas and theory of structure, joint behavior, functions such as walking, jumping, running, swimming, eating and more from the captured clues.

 As more and more 3D data is acquired the theoretical biomechanics come together as the species is reconstructed and now allows for even more specialized functional analysis. This can include using the MicroScribe laser scan data for Finite Element Analysis to evaluate joint and bone stress such as cranium & mandible stress and distribution . The new 3-D view of the data provides scientists with the ability to in real-time reformulate theory and hypothesis as they pursue the faithful reconstruction. Now one can zoom in, change perspectives and revolve the modeled species for fresh takes in the study.

Beside the 3-D reconstruction, the MicroScribe plays an important role in its ability to capture morphometric artifact details allowing researchers to define necessary land marks and measure for analysis from fossils and artifacts and even among related species. The captured MicroScribe data sets can easily be used with analysis software such as Morphologika, Morpheus, MorphorJ and others for regression analysis, PCA, Procrustes fit, matrix correlation and more.

The MicroScribe tactile digitizing and  laser scanning solutions are exceptionally portable and enables the Digital Paleontologist to capture fossils and other artifacts whether in the laboratory, in the field or in situ at the discovery site.

With the captured form, structural and biomechanical information the Digital Paleontologists can take the reconstruction to the next level with animation software tools. Utilizing the Immersion’s MicroScribe Connections for Maya, our Autodesk Maya plug-in, Species Animation can now incorporate the joint and motion behaviors and species specific degrees of freedom unique to the subject and add  life like motion to the model. Literally, the Digital Paleontologist can create a Virtual “Jurassic Park”. Not only to bring the creature understudy to life but to include it in its environment and detail natural environments interactions it would encounter in its existence. The Digital Paleontologist can now visualize these  interactions from all varieties of relationships and hone in on the most probable scenarios. 

Together the MicroScribe with MicroScribe Connections for Maya, Maya Plug- in, provides the user with unprecedented 6 degrees of freedom making very organic movement possible and exceptionally easy and exceptionally fast.

Creature realism is further enhanced thru the ability to take MicroScribe models into texturing tools and generate models with skin textures adding further to the integrity of the reconstruction... Texturing software such as Zbrush easily import the MicroScribe 3D scan data for the application of the skin with all of its texture, functional deformities, anatomical layout and more.

MicroScribe Features for the paleontologist:

Morphometric land mark measurement

Data useable by Morphologika, Morpheus, Morphos J and others laser scanning or digitizing of fossilized remains.

Portable, for easy on site in situ digitizing and scanning. Easy and fast modeled sculpture scanning or digitizing. Simplified complex surface capture. Interactive model animation: how it jumps, moves, swims, eats walks, runs. Organic animation motion with 6 axis motion control. Scalable 3-D models: morphing size. Models and surfaces are modifiable: size, shape, limb length joint positioning, thickness and more.

Scanned and digitized surfaces can be textured. Functional analysis using scans with FEA software eliminates subject deformities.