TOWARDS A FREELY AVAILABLE DATABASE OF VIRTUAL PALAEOZOIC ECHINODERMS

Virtual palaeontology, computer-aided visualization of fossils, is becoming increasingly important in palaeontological research, but has not yet been widely used in the study of extinct fossil echinoderms. This may be because the techniques involved are thought of as expensive and inaccessible, but this is no longer the case – modern methods for digitally capturing fossils in three-dimensions are both affordable and rapid, and are well-suited to echinoderms because of the availability of well-preserved, three-dimensional specimens for many different groups.

Here, I present virtual models of a range of Palaeozoic fossil echinoderms, all of which were imaged non-destructively using X-ray micro-tomography (XMT) and digitally reconstructed using the free SPIERS software suite. These reconstructions include representatives of around 40 species belonging to nine distinct groups (blastoids, cinctans, crinoids, ctenocystoids, edrioasteroids, eocrinoids, helicoplacoids, rhombiferans and stylophorans). The total size of the datasets collected as part of this project is 175 GB, and hence dissemination of data has proven a significant obstacle to productive research collaborations. However, the recent development of 3D PDF technology, as well as the advent of the VAXML interchange format, has meant that virtual models of fossils may now be readily shared between researchers in accessible formats; I advocate the development of an online database from which such models can be freely downloaded and studied for research and teaching purposes. Nevertheless, there is still urgent need for a means of storing the vast amounts of raw data (i.e. XMT slice-images) underlying these models (several GBs per scan), and this is now the limiting factor in the dissemination of virtual fossils.