An innovative scanner created by an NYU computer scientist is allowing scientists to digitize previously isolated fossils in remote South American regions. Claudio Silva’s PaleoScan provides a portable and affordable way to preserve and share collections of ancient impressions that may have otherwise been lost or smuggled.
Brazil’s Araripe Basin is lush with ancient fossils, some in unusually pristine condition. After a visit to the nearby Plácido Cidade Nuvens Museum of Paleontology (MPPCN), where many of them are stored, Silva saw “a labyrinth of floor-to-ceiling metal shelving units” that was “stacked high with piles of the most beautiful fossils he’d ever seen” from the Cretaceous period, as described by Smithsonian Magazine. The problem was the collection of insects, fish, turtles and pterosaurs from a distant past hadn’t been digitized. And, given the region’s limited funding, staffing and remote location (getting there requires a flight on a
