3D imaging of shark egg cases from Sweden

Researchers from the Swedish Museum of Natural History have published a study on the morphology of fossilized shark egg cases which sheds new light on the ecology of sharks in the Early Jurassic period. In the study published in GFF, high resolution microCT data were used to evaluate the morphology of ancient shark egg cases despite being fossilized over 200 million years ago. Dragonfly was used for segmentation, 3D visualization and measurements.

According to lead author Dr Kruger, “Dragonfly is essential to our workflow. After acquiring microCT data, Dragonfly allows us to visualize, compute, and measure high-resolution 3D data efficiently and effortlessly. For this study, Dragonfly was used to visualize unique fossil shark egg cases in 3D, allowing us to make morphological evaluations. We found the first ever potential evidence of a fossil shark embryo, and future work will continue -- of course utilizing the powerful features of Dragonfly.”

 

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Publication

Ashley Krüger, Sam Slater, Vivi Vajda, 3D imaging of shark egg cases (Palaeoxyris) from Sweden with new insights into Early Jurassic shark ecology, GFF, Volume 143, 2021, Issue 2-3 (https://doi.org/10.1080/11035897.2021.1907442).

Image Center

Scanning was done at the Stockholm University Brain Imaging Centre (SUBIC)

 

Keywords: Shark Egg Case, Ecology, Sharks, Jurassic

Images

Fossilized shark egg case shown in 3D with the surrounding rock removed virtually.