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  • NEWS FEATURE

The fight for control over virtual fossils

Palaeontologists have been urged to share 3D scans of fossils online, but a Nature analysis finds that few researchers do so.
  1. Dyani Lewis

    1. Dyani Lewis is a science journalist in Melbourne, Australia.

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A man holds a 3-D printed model of a mongoose skull.

Jack Tseng at the University at Buffalo in New York uses 3D scans to simulate stress patterns during biting, in skulls from fossils and extant species. Here, Tseng holds a 3D print of a mongoose skull (six times life size). Credit: Douglas Levere/University at Buffalo

A decade ago, palaeontologist Jack Tseng set out on a treasure hunt. Not the typical boots and pick-axe affair you might imagine, but one that is relatively common in his field. From his base at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in California, Tseng visited museums around the world to examine the skulls of carnivores in their collections. And whenever he encountered one, he asked whether he could take away 3D scans of the specimen. Tseng’s own institution housed skeletons from striped hyenas, cheetahs, jackals, aardwolves and mongooses, as well as skulls from extinct hyenas and dogs. But Tseng, then a doctoral student, needed even more exotic fossils for his research on how carnivores evolved the ability to crush bone. “I was looking for exceptionally complete skulls,” he says.

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Nature 567, 20-23 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-00739-0

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Supplementary Information

  1. Who shares 3D scans data

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