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Dinosaur CSI
What is Dinosaur CSI?
The phrase CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) is very appropriate when describing how a paleontologist studies a fossil and the site where it was found. The dinosaur is the dead body, and the scientist has to figure out how and what killed it. Often there will be ˝bullets˝ - the teeth of a predator - found at the crime scene.
Leonardo presents us with some very interesting questions. For example, why did nothing eat the body? In nature, that much meat usually doesn't last long, a reason why we are not up to our elbows in mummified dinosaurs. Meat-eating dinosaurs, bugs and bacteria would all normally feast on the flesh until nothing but a few bones remained.
Because Leonardo is the first dinosaur fossil ever discovered with the skin of his body unbroken, it was important to be able to study him without damaging the fossil. This meant figuring out a way to look inside the fossil without digging into it and damaging the skin. This is where companies like Eastman Kodak, Carestream Health and NDT Group as well as scientists like Art Andersen, Tom Kaye and Dr. Robert Morton, came in, donating valuable time and resources to allow researchers the chance to peer inside Leonardo without damaging the fossil. Using technologies such as Computed Radiography, along with various scanning, elemental and spectroscopic analysis, the research team has made a number of amazing discoveries.
Copyright (c) 2008 The Leonardo Project. All rights reserved.
