Posted on 09/14/2010 7:22:42 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Clarisse is a snake, found in the Fossil Butte region of Wyoming, perfectly fossilized in limestone and the only one of her kind known to be in existence. Palentologist Hussan Zaher found her, and he brought her to Houston in hopes of learning more about her.
He brought his precious find to The Methodist Hospital and subjected her to a detailed CT (computerized tomography) scan in hopes of finding where Clarisse fits along the timeline of evolution.
[You need Flash installed to watch this video]
...CT scan technician Pam Mager conducted the scan on a 64-slice scanner that is capable of sending laser-guided X-rays through a target...
Zaher, professor and curator of the collections of herpetology and paleontology at the Museu de Zoologia of the Universidade de Sao Paulo in Brazil, worked with the Museum of Natural Science in Houston to get Clarisse to Methodist for the scan. He believes Clarisse could be an evolutionary link between snakes who take a lot of small bites to eat their prey and snakes who swallow their prey whole.
The snake fossil was preserved in what is now limestone, and the entire chunk of rock was placed on the bed of the CT scanner. In less than a minute, the images were taken and assembled by computer into a three-dimensional image that could be rotated 360 degrees.
Taking a preliminary look at the images, Zaher said he saw no traces of limbs... For more than an hour, he and technician Mager studied the images, looking at tiny details of the snake's skull to find clues to how it may have eaten its prey.
(Excerpt) Read more at physorg.com ...
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Prognoses?
Will snake scans be covered under obamascare?
The whole concept of doing a scan on a snake, even one 50M years dead is just silly.
Grandmother showed me how to view interior sections by using a chopping hoe. And she managed to get about 200 sections from a 8" grass snake in 1967.
As I matured, I prefer the more holographic approach of 12 ga & #8 shot at point blank range. It gives more resolution at the cellular level.
/johnny
Since he won’t even show us his birth certificate, I’m pretty sure his cat scans will never come up in conversation.
I wonder if they put this snake fossil on a scale?
I tried X-raying a fossil once in our lab. I hope they have more success than I did. There was just no internal structure to speak of that was discernable at any magnification. Granted it was a mucrospirifer (mollusk), but if this technique worked I would think it would be common.
The snake would get professional courtesy from a malpractice lawyer.
My thought was Pelosi....
That’s just insulting — to snakes.
They use pretty sophisticated equipment, too. :’)
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