Dino fossils show some skin

摘要

What happens when you shoot lasers at a dinosaur fossil? Some chemicals preserved in the fossil glow, providing a nuanced portrait of the ancient creature's bones, feathers and soft tissue such as skin. Soft tissue is rarely preserved in fossils, and when it is, it can be easily obscured. A technique called laser-stimulated fluorescence "excites the few skin atoms left in the matrix, making them glow to reveal what the shape of the dinosaur actually looked like," says Michael Pittman, a paleontologist at the University of Hong Kong.