PALEONTOLOGICAL PROJECTS AT THE ADVANCED PHOTON SOURCE (APS)

Even Synchrotron radiation analysis have become more popular among paleontologists in the last years, there is still a large part of our community that does not consider these techniques to study their fossil material, even the correct application and interpretation of these novel techniques can help resolving some major problems related with these materials.

In the last two years, several new projects on paleontology research have start at the Advanced Photon Source, the only third generation synchrotron source at the US, and one of the more brilliant photon sources around the globe. Some of these projects have benefited from the imaging capabilities of the two tomographic beamlines, capable of producing scans from 3 microns to 70 nm of spatial resolution. Other projects have explored the fluorescence capabilities of the large field of view instrument, capable of detecting the presence of different elements in the surface of large objects from 30 to 5 microns of spatial resolution.

The projects developed at the APS during these last two years involve the study of different groups of plants from Mongolia, Panama or France, invertebrates in amber from all over the world, vertebrate bones and teeth and many more.