Welcome to the Amira-Avizo Software Use Case Gallery

Biological specimens are primary records of organismal ecology and history. As such, museum collections are invaluable repositories for testing ecological and evolutionary hypotheses across the tree of life. Digitizing and broadly sharing the phenotypic data from these collections serves to expand the traditional reach of museums, enabling widespread data sharing, collaboration, and education at an unprecedented scale. In recent years, μCT-scanning has been adopted as one way for efficiently... Read more

The Faroe Islands are a group of islands in the North Atlantic that are known for its natural beauty, Viking culture and a special population of house mouse. The Faroese house mouse from the most remote island of the Faroese, Mykines (population: 10 people), looked so distinct when it was discovered that it was declared a subspecies, Mus musculus faeroenesis. These mice are large-bodied and showed an extreme form of left-right asymmetry in its skull. Our research group has... Read more

The elongate-necked aquatic plesiosaurs existed for 135 Myr during the Mesozoic. The function of this elongate neck is a point of debate. Using computed tomography and three-dimensional (3D) modelling, the range of motion (ROM) of the plesiosaur Nichollssaura borealis neck was assessed. To quantify the ROM, the intervertebral mobility was measured along the cervical vertebral column. This was done by manipulating the 3D models in the lateral and dorsoventral directions during two tri... Read more

The tongue, with fleshy, muscular, and bony components, is an innovation of the earliest land-dwelling vertebrates with key functions in both feeding and respiration. Here, we bring together evidence from preserved hyoid elements from dinosaurs and outgroup archosaurs, including pterosaurs, with enhanced contrast x-ray computed tomography data from extant taxa. Midline ossification is a key component of the origin of an avian hyoid. The elaboration of the avian tongue includes the evolution o... Read more

Alveolar bone, together with the underlying trabecular bone, fulfils an important role in providing structural support against masticatory forces. Diseases such as osteoporosis or periodontitis cause alveolar bone resorption which weakens this structural support and is a major cause of tooth loss. However, the functional relationship between alveolar bone remodelling within the molar region and masticatory forces is not well understood. This study investigated this relationship by comparing m... Read more

Angiosperm-dominated floras of the Late Cretaceous are essential for understanding the evolutionary, ecological, and geographic radiation of flowering plants.

The Late Cretaceous–early Paleogene Deccan Intertrappean Beds of India contain angiosperm-dominated plant fossil assemblages known from multiple localities in central India. Numerous monocots have been documented from these assemblages, providing a window into an important but poorly understood time in their diversification. On... Read more

An eosauropterygian skeleton found in the Middle Triassic (upper Anisian) Gutenstein Formation of the Fatric Unit (Demänovská dolina Valley, Low Tatra Mountains, Slovakia) represents the earliest known occurrence of marine tetrapods in the Western Carpathians. The specimen represents a partly articulated portion of the postcranial skeleton (nine dorsal vertebrae, coracoid, ribs, gastral ribs, pelvic girdle, femur and one zeugopodial element). It is assigned to the Pachypleurosauria, more pr... Read more

New finds of fossils and stone tools from the archaeological site of Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, push back the origins of our species by one hundred thousand years and show that by about 300 thousand years ago important changes in our biology and behaviour had taken place across most of Africa.

Leaellynasaura amicagraphica was a small, bipedal, herbivorous dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous (~106 million years ago) of Australia within the Antarctic Circle of that time.

Synchrotron scans, and the resulting 3D reconstruction of the skull and post-cranial skeleton, provide a unique view of the morphology of Leaellynasaura, and allows this material to be 3D printed for display.

“Scanning is important, but it is really just the first step in an immersive exploration of artifacts” says Elias. Raw data from scans taken of mummies (or other archaeological subject matter) is delivered to AMSC Research as files in a language known as DICOM. Next, these are converted into a visually readable form for analytical purposes and to launch the creative modeling process.

Elias uses Amira software to analyze scan data. Mummies are biological entities, so apart f... Read more

Entering this special exhibit at the Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago, you will immediately feel transported into the ancient  Nile delta marshlands with its lush green flora.

The combination of colors, video footage, bird songs, and ancient artifacts will give you the impression that you have just traveled through time and space.

At the start of the exhibit, you will find one of their most impressive artifacts, an empty shell of an ostrich egg from 3100 B... Read more

The IBM Visual and Spatial Technology Centre (VISTA) specialize in large scale data capture, analysis and visualization for the Arts and Humanities at the University of Birmingham, UK. The VISTA Centre supports interdisciplinary academic research and application development for visualization, spatial analysis and imaging using state-ofthe- art technology.

Avizo software is a fundamental tool that provides new opportunities for data... Read more

Madtsoiids are among the most basal snakes, with a fossil record dating back to the Upper Cretaceous (Cenomanian). Most representatives went extinct by the end of the Eocene, but some survived in Australia until the Late Cenozoic. Yurlunggur and Wonambi are two of these late forms, and also the best-known madtsoiids to date. A better understanding of the anatomy and palaeoecology of these taxa may shed light on the evolution and extinction of this poorly known group of s... Read more

The ∼3.48 billion-year-old Dresser Formation, Pilbara Craton, Western Australia, is a key geological unit for the study of Earth’s earliest life and the habitats it occupied. Here, we describe a new suite of spheroidal to lenticular microstructures that morphologically resemble some previously reported Archean microfossils. Correlative microscopy shows that these objects have a size distribution, wall ultrastructure, and chemistry that are incompatible with a microfossil origin and in... Read more

Prepared core technology illustrates in-depth planning and the presence of a mental template during the core reduction process. This technology is, therefore, a significant indicator in studying the evolution of abstract thought and the cognitive abilities of hominids. Here, we report on Victoria West cores excavated from the Canteen Kopje site in central South Africa, with a preliminary age estimate of approximately 1 Ma (million years ago) for these cores. Technological analysis shows tha... Read more

The late Middle Palaeolithic (MP) settlement patterns in the Levant included the repeated use of caves and open landscape sites. The fossil record shows that two types of hominins occupied the region during this period—Neandertals and Homo sapiens. Until recently, diagnostic fossil remains were found only at cave sites. Because the two populations in this region left similar material cultural remains, it was impossible to attribute any open-air site to either species. In this study... Read more

The split of our own clade from the Panini is undocumented in the fossil record. To fill this gap we investigated the dentognathic morphology of Graecopithecus freybergi from Pyrgos Vassilissis (Greece) and cf. Graecopithecus sp. from Azmaka (Bulgaria), using new μCT and 3D reconstructions of the two known specimens. Pyrgos Vassilissis and Azmaka are currently dated to the early Messinian at 7.175 Ma and 7.24 Ma. Mainly based on its external preservation and the previou... Read more

Investigation on cochlear variation, an indirect evidence of auditory capacities among early hominins and extant catarrhine species, in order to assess (i) the phylogenetic signal of relative external cochlear length (RECL) and oval window area (OWA), the evolutionary model with the highest probability of explaining our observed data, some hominin ancestral nodes for RECL and OWA. RECL has a high phylogenetic signal under a Brownian motion model, and is closely correlated with body mass. Our... Read more

Paleontological research increasingly uses high-resolution micro-computed tomography (μCT) to study the inner architecture of modern and fossil bone material to answer important questions regarding vertebrate evolution. This non-destructive method allows for the measurement of otherwise inaccessible morphology. Digital measurement is predicated on the accurate segmentation of modern or fossilized bone from other structures imaged in μCT scans, as errors in segmentation can result in inaccur... Read more

The terrestrial Judith River Formation of northern Montana was deposited over an approximately 4 Myr interval during the Campanian (Late Cretaceous). Despite having been prospected and collected continuously by palaeontologists for over a century, few relatively complete dinosaur skeletons have been recovered from this unit to date. Here we describe a new genus and species of ankylosaurine dinosaur, Zuul crurivastator, from the Coal Ridge Member of the Judith River Formation, based ... Read more