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Containers of fossils from 1909 expedition reconstructed nondestructively

37 points by wglb 4y ago

mkoryak 4y ago
Sounds expensive. Who wants to pay for this instead of just opening the containers. I bet they weren't so careful digging it up and packing it 100 years ago
- rnk 4y ago
  The article needs to explain why they can't just open the containers. I don't see why these things would provide that much historical information, they just aren't old enough.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
isaacg 4y ago
This is a story about documenting multiple kinds of history at once: documenting the dinosaurs, and documenting the expeditions that dug up the fossils. Prior to modern technology, it was either-or: Open the containers, or preserve them. Now, we can have it all.
verisimi 4y ago
> Using their high-quality medical CT scanners, colleagues from IZW and Charité now helped to analyze the contents of the shipping containers non-destructively. "It was very exciting for all of us to finally know exactly what was inside the bamboo corsets without having to open them right away," says Daniela Schwarz, head of the study. "Until now, there was a lot of uncertainty about how to handle this material, because physical preparation really takes a lot of time, and you also don't want to destroy historical documents of the era." Right - I empathise with the idea of not wanting to damage historical artifacts. But are we stepping into a situation where a scan and then the representation of that scan to the world, is now history? Can we really add those 2 layers in, without debate? For me this is deeply problematic - it involves all sorts of levels of trust that I simply do not have. If it is impossible to personally verify whatever-it-is, and we simply have to take a lab or history department's word for it, we leave ourselves wide open to fakery. 'Dall-e: generate a picture of a rare dinosaur jaw fragment in the style of a CT medical scanner'. At least, with the 'old' way, someone somewhere has a chance of verifying whatever we are told.
Someone 4y ago
From the article: “The dinosaur material originating from Tendaguru proved to be so rich and spectacular that the site remains one of the most important dinosaur localities in the world today. Of the dinosaur material from Tendaguru, 40 original packed and unopened bamboo corsets and six wooden crates with unprepared bones are still in the vertebrate collection of the MfN” Or, after removing a few words: “The dinosaur material originating from Tendaguru proved to be so rich and spectacular that […] 40 original packed and unopened bamboo corsets and six wooden crates with unprepared bones are still in the vertebrate collection of the MfN” That sums up a problem of this kind of science: it is easier to get more money for digging things up than for looking at what you dug upon depth. The “spectacular” likely was unpacked and studied, but spending money on “might be very interesting, but not spectacular” isn’t that popular. That also happens in biology (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/want-to-find-a-new-species-start-in-a-museum/ https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/want-to-find-a-new-sp...: “discovering new species in the depths of museum archives is not so uncommon”) and in archaeology (builders often have to pay to have stuff that would be destroyed by their activity take out of the ground to be preserved, but not to study it)

37 points by wglb 4y ago

Sounds expensive. Who wants to pay for this instead of just opening the containers. I bet they weren't so careful digging it up and packing it 100 years ago

rnk 4y ago
The article needs to explain why they can't just open the containers. I don't see why these things would provide that much historical information, they just aren't old enough.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

isaacg 4y ago

This is a story about documenting multiple kinds of history at once: documenting the dinosaurs, and documenting the expeditions that dug up the fossils. Prior to modern technology, it was either-or: Open the containers, or preserve them. Now, we can have it all.

verisimi 4y ago

> Using their high-quality medical CT scanners, colleagues from IZW and Charité now helped to analyze the contents of the shipping containers non-destructively. "It was very exciting for all of us to finally know exactly what was inside the bamboo corsets without having to open them right away," says Daniela Schwarz, head of the study. "Until now, there was a lot of uncertainty about how to handle this material, because physical preparation really takes a lot of time, and you also don't want to destroy historical documents of the era." Right - I empathise with the idea of not wanting to damage historical artifacts. But are we stepping into a situation where a scan and then the representation of that scan to the world, is now history? Can we really add those 2 layers in, without debate? For me this is deeply problematic - it involves all sorts of levels of trust that I simply do not have. If it is impossible to personally verify whatever-it-is, and we simply have to take a lab or history department's word for it, we leave ourselves wide open to fakery. 'Dall-e: generate a picture of a rare dinosaur jaw fragment in the style of a CT medical scanner'. At least, with the 'old' way, someone somewhere has a chance of verifying whatever we are told.

Someone 4y ago

From the article: “The dinosaur material originating from Tendaguru proved to be so rich and spectacular that the site remains one of the most important dinosaur localities in the world today. Of the dinosaur material from Tendaguru, 40 original packed and unopened bamboo corsets and six wooden crates with unprepared bones are still in the vertebrate collection of the MfN” Or, after removing a few words: “The dinosaur material originating from Tendaguru proved to be so rich and spectacular that […] 40 original packed and unopened bamboo corsets and six wooden crates with unprepared bones are still in the vertebrate collection of the MfN” That sums up a problem of this kind of science: it is easier to get more money for digging things up than for looking at what you dug upon depth. The “spectacular” likely was unpacked and studied, but spending money on “might be very interesting, but not spectacular” isn’t that popular. That also happens in biology (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/want-to-find-a-new-species-start-in-a-museum/ https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/want-to-find-a-new-sp...: “discovering new species in the depths of museum archives is not so uncommon”) and in archaeology (builders often have to pay to have stuff that would be destroyed by their activity take out of the ground to be preserved, but not to study it)