PROSPECTS IN MICROANALYTICAL PALEOBIOLOGY: APPLICATIONS OF SCANNING ELECTRON MICROSCOPY IN THE STUDY OF ANCIENT LIFE

The scanning electron microscope (SEM) has been commercially available for a little over 50 years. In this last half a century, SEM has become a widely and routinely used tool in Earth science applications owing to its capabilities for sub-micrometer-scale imaging. Indeed, SEM imaging of fossils has nearly as long a history as the availability of the instrument itself, with the first SEM-based paleontological publication coming in 1967 by Sandberg and Hay. But these instruments are much more capable than just fancy, expensive, high-magnification cameras. Electron beam-sample interactions provide a wealth of analytically useful signals. For instance, the application of SEM-based spectrometric techniques to the examination of fossil composition has grown exponentially within the last twenty years, emerging from important works by Orr et al. (1998) among numerous others. Improvements in technology, ease of use, and expanding access to such instruments have established SEM as cornerstones in the world of digital/virtual paleobiology. In this presentation, which is admittedly a thinly veiled advertisement for the newly established MizzoµX Core Facility for X-ray Microanalysis at the University of Missouri Department of Geological Sciences, we provide a brief tour of SEM history, discuss recent advancements in technology, and illustrate benefits of combined, multi-technique approaches in fossil analyses. As an overview, both published and unpublished taphonomic studies (of mostly, but not limited to, Paleozoic materials) will be used to illustrate the benefits, ambitions, and pitfalls of SEM-based analyses in paleobiological research. Ultimately, such microtaphonomic investigation provides a means to decipher and disentangle preserved biology from preservational artifacts, and holds valuable potential for shedding light on evolutionarily significant intervals and/or fossil organisms in Earth’s history.