Advanced Synchrotron Characterization of Paleontological Specimens

Fossils have been carefully documented since the time of the Classical Greek philosophers, in particular by Aristotle and his disciples in the 4th century BC. Fossils consist of highly heterogeneous materials. Such heterogeneity results from their original complexity and the short-to-longterm changes they experienced from their death, their deposition, their entire postdeposition history to their discovery, storage, and display (i.e. taphonomy, geological history, and conservation). Ever since the early microscopic observations of petrifi ed wood by Robert Hooke (1635–1703) in 1665, cutting-edge imaging approaches have been used to investigate the fi ne-scale character of fossils. The past ten years have witnessed a great increase in imaging studies of specimens. Synchrotron radiation (SR) 3-D X-ray microcomputed tomography (μCT) (together termed SR-μCT) can image a fossils’ internal morphology in unprecedented detail and so help constrain phylogenetic relationships (Tafforeau et al. 2006). phylogenetic relationships (Tafforeau et al. 2006). In parallel, a suite of spectro-imaging methods have been developed for fi nescale chemical and structural characterization.