Many of us are happy to spend hours at a time playing video games.
Whether they’re console or PC, first-person shooters or farming sims,
there’s a game out there for just about anyone.
But there’s a secret behind the technology that makes these games possible,
and it has nothing to do with your leaderboard stats.
Because the same software that makes some of the most popular video games
has another unexpected application: Helping paleontologists learn about animals
that roamed the Earth millions of years ago.
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We’re mostly going to talk about a program called Blender,
and chances are, you’ve seen stuff that was made with this software before.
It’s a free, open source 3D modeling software used in films, TV shows
and, most notably, video games.
The studio that makes popular games like Assassin’s Creed, Just Dance,
and more uses Blender on their projects, so you may have seen it in action.
But gaming isn’t the only thing the software makes possible.
It’s also used to study fossils.
Lots of paleontologists rely on 3D graphics software to make virtual fossils,
which are exactly what they sound like.
You take high-quality CT or surface scans of a fossil,
upload them into the software, and boom!
Virtual replica of a piece of history.
Over the past few decades,
this technology has made it a lot easier to be a paleontologist.
As computers have gotten cheaper and 3D interfaces have gotten easier to use,
virtual fossils have allowed modern paleontologists
to do things they never dreamed of a few decades ago.
At the simplest level, the technology gives researchers access
to more specimens than it’s possible to see in-person.
If a researcher in Kansas wants to examine a fossil in a German
natural history museum, it's not so easy to just pop by to have a look.
However, if there are CT scans of that particular specimen, the data can be
plugged into 3D modeling software and shared with lots of people at once.
So that paleontologist in Kansas doesn’t have to brush up on her German.
Plus, it’s super easy to 3D print the virtual fossil,
either in actual size, or one that’s larger than life, to really get a look at the details.
Or you can go miniature,
in case you want a little fossil friend to hang out on your desk, or something.
Virtual fossils are also important in preserving the fossils themselves,
because analysis can be hard on a specimen.
And let’s face it, fossils can be very fragile.
One researcher famously destroyed an especially precious fossil back in 1961.
The fossil was the holotype of its species, and it was the first one ever found.
And in order to study the details of its skull,
the researcher cut the fossil into slices manually, and drew each slice on paper.
And yeah, he did learn a lot about the anatomy of the animal’s skull.
But it was the first and only fossil of the species that they had at the time,
so when it was gone, that was it.
They tried to preserve a copy by making a wax cast of the fossil,
but unfortunately wax is soft, and that cast deformed over time.
And the thing is, a modern CT scan can produce images just like those slices,
but without actually cutting into anything.
So these days, we can get just as much information, without the bone saw.
If only they’d waited a few decades.
Not only do virtual fossils help researchers retire some destructive methods,
but they make it possible to run all kinds of experiments
that aren’t possible with physical fossils alone.
For instance, researchers can experiment on the digital model of the fossil
to figure out how the organism might have moved when it was alive.
One 2019 paper investigated the movements of an ancient tetrapod called
Orobates, which lived in the Permian, between 280 and 290 million years ago.
They were able to use scans of an incredible fossil
in order to simulate the range of motion at each joint of the fossil.
Then compared that information with fossil footprints,
which told them exactly how this animal would have been able to move and walk
when it was alive, hundreds of millions of years ago.
And a 2021 paper did a similar reconstruction of bite force.
The researchers took measurements of virtual fossils
and ran calculations based on the different properties of tooth tissues.
See, teeth aren’t just made of one thing.
They’ve got layers.
And those layers have different strengths, meaning that if you run calculations
as though the tooth is all enamel, your math will be wrong.
So their bite force reconstructions that took these factors into account
were way more accurate,
and they wouldn't have been possible without 3D modeling technology.
It's even possible to reconstruct damaged fossils,
and then 3D print the fixed-up version.
In 2022, a study reported their success with repairing a distorted fossil in Blender,
using a tool called “armature” to slowly manipulate
the surface of the fossil into the right shape.
Kind of like un-crumpling a sheet of paper, one fold at a time.
And they not only ended up with a complete fossil to look at,
but because Blender saved each manipulation of the fossil, they could study
exactly how the fossil got from perfect point A to messed-up point B.
Studying that process is called taphonomy, and it’s really important to understand
so we know how fossils get so messed up in the first place.
So the same software that helped the artists behind some of your favorite video
games is also a key part of how you can learn about your favorite fossils!
Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow.
And if you’ve got any younger folks in your life
and you want to share the science knowledge, we’ve got just the channel for you.
Over at SciShow Kids, our host Jessi and resident robo-rat Squeaks
learn all about the world we live in with the help of a whole bunch of friends.
For instance, we’ve got a whole set of episodes all about dinosaurs
and other ancient critters that once roamed the earth.
If you know anyone that might like to explore science
with the help of this awesome crew, send them over to SciShow Kids!
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