PALEONTOLOGY AT THE ADVANCED PHOTON SOURCE - NEW RESOURCES FOR PALEONTOLOGICAL RESEARCH

In the last years, paleontological projects have become more common in synchrotron light sources. The vast majority of these studies were based in three dimensional tomography of specimens which internal or external anatomy was not accesible by conventional optical methods, such as opaque amber or nodule fossils. Also, this techniques have been used on specimens very scarce in the fossil record, to obtain data without harming permanently the integrity of the piece.

At the Advance Photon Source in Argonne National Laboratory in US the use of high resolution tomography on fossils has increased in the last year, showing the capabilities of the instruments in this laboratory.

Moreover, other techniques have been made available for paleontological community in this 3rd generation synchrotron light source to obtain a more detailed level of information of paleontological samples, such as fluorescence microscopy, nanotomography or diffraction tomography.