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PaleoScan is a cheap imaging device democratizing fossil research
An innovative scanner is allowing scientists to digitize previously isolated fossils in remote South American regions. PaleoScan provides a portable and affordable way to preserve and share collections of ancient impressions that may have otherwise been lost or smuggled.
After a visit to the nearby Plácido Cidade Nuvens Museum of Paleontology (MPPCN), where many of them are stored, Silva saw “a labyrinth of floor-to-ceiling metal shelving units” that was “stacked high with piles of the most beautiful fossils he’d ever seen” from the Cretaceous period, as described by Smithsonian Magazine. Digitizing the fossils could help thwart that practice — both by providing virtual scans, which help offset the risk-benefit ratio for smugglers, and by creating a global dataset paleontologists could use to trace stolen artifacts to their source. The solution Silva created is PaleoScan, a low-cost, high-throughput scanner that he packed into “large wooden boxes” on his journey back to MPPCN in the summer of 2023.
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