“X-Ray Fluorescence Reveals Inner Skull of 140 Million-Year-Old Dinosaur”

Ronan Allain was taking a break in the sofa of the cockpit of the BM18 beamline of the European synchrotron (ESRF), in Grenoble, when the shape appeared on the screen this morning of April 14. “What you see there is the endocaste, the inner part of the dinosaur’s skull”immediately intervenes the paleontologist at the National Museum of Natural History (MNHN), in Paris, designating, in the central part of the section, an area with a texture different from that of the surrounding fossilized bone. “It is this ancient cavity which was, 140 million years ago, occupied by the brain of this individual. »

Discovered on the site of Angeac-Charente, near Angoulême, this turiasaurus, a sauropod with a long neck and a long tail, is one of the largest animals to have ever set foot on the earth’s surface: this specimen must have weighed more than 30 tons and exceed 20 meters. Of his skull, only the rear part remains, placed on a table. “Our goal is to probe the fossil using an X-ray tomography technique in order to collect images to produce a 3D model of its endocast.explains the researcher. By comparing this reconstruction with those available for other species, we hope to gain insight into the abilities, physiology and behavior of this herbivore. For example, whether the tilt of its head made it more likely to eat foliage placed high up than ferns located near the ground. That is, to learn if he was specialized. »

Ronan Allain came with two of his colleagues to perform a series of examinations at the Grenoble synchrotron. A trip of a week he says ” necessary “ for, of all the existing research infrastructures, this facility has proven to be the only one to produce high-energy X-ray beams sufficiently intense, bright and wide enough to be able to explore its material with the desired efficiency and precision. In this case, a small collection of fossils made up of teeth, tibias, femurs, jawbones and cranial boxes that his team managed to extract from the clay soils of the geological stage of the Berriasian (lower Cretaceous) of the site of ‘Angeac-Charente. Spotted in 2010, this abundant deposit has produced, in addition to plant debris, 10,000 fossils and tens of thousands of other animal remains, as well as a large quantity of footprints and coprolites, all deposited in the same span of a few hundred years.

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