Lucy, a 3.2-million-year-old specimen of Australopithecus afarensis, was recently studied in the High-resolution X-ray CT Facility at The University of Texas at Austin. She is the feature attraction in the exhibit, “Lucy's Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia,” on display at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, Wa. Over 35,000 individual CT slices were collected during the scanning project. Image courtesy of the Houston Museum of Natural Science.
Photo: Frank White for Houston Museum of Natural Science
Scanning team (“Lucy the fossil 2008 team with IDs.jpg”)
Members of the scanning team included (from left) Ron Harvey, conservator, Lincolnville, Maine; Alemu Admassu, curator, National Museum, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; John Kappelman, UT Austin; and Richard Ketcham, UT Austin. The team used the ultra high-resolution Xradia MicroXCT scanner (background), for some of the scans.
Photo: Marsha Miller/The University of Texas at Austin
Image of Lucy element in scanner (“Lucy the fossil 2008 - 3.18 million years old, scanned i jk rotate crop (1).jpg”)
Several of Lucy’s skeletal elements, including the right distal radius (arm bone) were scanned with an ultra high-resolution Xradia MicroXCT scanner in the High-resolution X-ray CT Facility at the University of Texas at Austin. Custom-built foam mounts were constructed to safely hold the specimens in the scanner. Each of the 80 pieces was carefully examined before and after scanning to ensure that no damage occurred during the project.
Photo: Marsha Miller/The University of Texas at Austin
Visit www.eLucy.org, an educational website for people of all ages to learn about Lucy and its place in the history of human evolution. Users can access an interactive viewer to compare images of Lucy’s bones with those of a human and chimpanzee. The website has a variety of puzzles, word searches, and flashcards along with life-sized printouts of Lucy and skeletons of adult and juvenile humans. Teachers can download lesson plans for use in the classroom.
Splash screen of HRXCT website (“HRXCT_splash a.jpg”)
Examples of a wide range of specimens scanned at UT’s High-Resolution X-ray Computed Tomography Facility, as well as information about high-resolution CT scanning, can be found at www.ctlab.geo.utexas.edu