since the field museum opened in 1894
this institution and many like ours have
seen an incredible rise in technological
advancements we now have computers and
cameras and a youtube show and a digital
database that can be searched from any
computer on the planet but recently I
got the chance to talk with Ryan Felice
who's a researcher at University College
London about a piece of technology I
could have never fathomed in my lifetime
it's a 3d surface scanner but I like to
call it the amazing laser so this isn't
just like a set piece from Star Trek no
it is actually real despite being super
sci-fi looking and it lets us create
digital representations of skeletal
Anatomy with really really high
resolution and the reason that you're
here at the Museum is because you you
need to scan lots of stuff lots of
material yes we are trying to get
information about fifteen or twenty
percent of general living today and so
the only way that we're able to get that
breath is by going to big museum
collections like the Field Museum and
scanning everything yeah and this is
something that like if you were doing it
in the way we had before you'd have to
take each one of these skulls to like a
hospital right yeah T scanned there are
a few hospitals that have good
relationships with researchers or also a
few select universities will have micro
CT machines that can scan things that
are about you know tiny maybe like a
baseball size or something like that
right
but with this we're able to go to where
the specimens are and we're able to scan
things from you know maybe a pigeon
skull that's that big to a saltwater
crocodile skull that's two and a half
feet long you yeah this thing just blows
my mind because when some of these
specimens were collected 100 or 200
years ago we had no idea how they would
be utilized in the future and like this
right now
is the future of how we can utilize this
kind of technology in museums it's true
museum collections are
a main source of data for people
studying skeletons and paleontologists
but until the relatively recent past
you've relied on photographs or taking
calipers or rulers and take linear
measurements which is still really good
and is is the our meat and potatoes but
this lets us get really detailed
information yeah I'm really excited to
see how this thing actually works all
right let's do it all we have to do is
grab the gun point it at our mute swans
skull here and with a couple clicks we
start making there it is Wow back the
skull and the beak you start making the
model how is it looking well there's two
things going on one is that in the tip
of this laser gun there's a laser
emitter shooting a blue line at the
skull yeah and right next to the laser
emitter is a camera and so the camera
looks at the reflection of the laser as
it hits your specimen and is able to
measure the depth information that is
then combined with information from this
arm that gives it spatial information
telling the computer where the laser gun
is in space Wow and so by combining the
XYZ coordinates of that spatial
information with the depth information
from the laser you're able to completely
recreate all the shape of the specimen
in a computer this is just like
instantaneous I mean you were literally
just taking this magic gun and shooting
it at yeah in less than probably two
minutes you're able to recreate
everything that your eye can see
its line of sight right so then all we
have to do is then flip the specimen
over and do the other side and plug the
top and bottom together and you have
perfectly recreated surface of the
structures what is the research goal of
getting all of this information with
this really amazing tech delta-t well
what we really want to do is understand
how skeletal diversity has evolved over
time
across all sorts of land animals birds
and mammals amphibians reptiles and we
want to be able to understand very minut
details of shape evolution yeah and so
by creating these digital models we can
take a very robust measurements and
quantify the the anatomy and very
complex ways and we can of course bring
the digital files back to our lab and
work on them for months and years rather
than spending all the time in in a
museum I like having to go to multiple
new rides like repeats and to be able to
get that wide data set in such a short
amount of time yeah would not have been
possible without this amazing as I
really thought do you ever think that
there's going to be a point where this
technology can somehow replace having to
how is in store all of the specimens
that we have in our museum if you could
just have a digital copy of a really
nice scan of one we're really happy
about this technology because it lets us
do new and interesting things with aunt
uncle research that we couldn't have
done even five years ago but it's
definitely not the pinnacle of
anatomical science and you can never
really replace having the actual bones
in your hands as impressive as this is
we're not getting the internal
structures like the inside of the nasal
cavity the inside of the brain case ten
years from now there's going to be some
new tool that there's going to be
another postdoc here saying WOW like
look what we can do now that we couldn't
do ten years ago and so you always want
to have these original artifacts that
you can go back to and and remeasure I
think it just comes back to like we need
these specimens here in order to help us
compare even how that technology has
improved in our lifetimes that's a
really good point you always want to
have the original artifact whatever it
is so that new teams of researchers can
go back and repeat that study and make
sure that the conclusions that the
original researchers found were
right and we never up science works yeah
exactly so and so if you were all using
one person's digital models rather than
the actual remains of the animals then
it takes away some element of that
repeatability awesome this was fantastic
yeah it's been fun Thanks
hey thanks for watching this episode of
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