ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, June 21, 1996 TAG: 9606210047
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: LISA K. GARCIA STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Below
RESEARCHERS AT VIRGINIA TECH peered inside two dinosaur eggs with scanning equipment to find ... something interesting.
Was there really a dinosaur fetus trapped in the fossilized eggs that resembled softball-size malt balls?
William Greenberg, a Virginia Tech mathematics professor, hoped a CAT scan at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine in Blacksburg would answer that question Thursday.
About 100 million years ago, - give or take 50 million - a relative of a duck-billed dinosaur laid its eggs on a bank of China's Huang (Yellow) River.
Not long after, a flood, combined with dramatic climatic changes, created an ideal environment for the eggs to fossilize - a process in this case where animal matter was replaced slowly by minerals. About four years ago, hundreds of eggs were discovered and sold by local residents for $1 apiece before the government declared the eggs "national treasures" and closed the trade.
Greenberg managed to get three eggs lent to Virginia Tech based on his professional relationship with Florence and Charlie Magovern, paleontologists based in Boulder, Colo. The couple were photographed for the May issue of National Geographic magazine surrounded by hundreds of dinosaur eggs they bought from Chinese dealers before the ban.
The Magoverns were having trouble with digital photographic-image transfer work they were doing and asked for Greenberg's mathematics expertise.
On Thursday, Greenberg greeted curious onlookers as he carried two eggs encrusted in fossilized mud to the radiology area of the animal hospital. Once there, he unwrapped a blanket of bubble packing and placed the fossil on the scanner table.
The computerized tomography unit, commonly referred to as a CAT scanner, is able to invade the fossil with X-rays and produce visual slices, according to Susie Ayers, who performed the scan. The hospital's 3-year-old CAT scanner is identical to ones used on human beings and has already been used to peer inside a sperm whale's head for research done by the Smithsonian Institution, Ayers said.
Dr. Jeryl Jones, assistant professor and veterinary radiologist, said the CAT scan can differentiate between rock and the fossilized shell just like when it images bone and tissue. The computer for the CAT scanner, however, is programmed to look at various animal parts, such as the brain. So, the technicians had to "trick" the machine into using a sensitivity level appropriate for the fossil. In this case, they told the machine it was looking at a spine, Ayers said.
The radiology staff had already helped out once on this project when they scanned another egg June 7. That egg, Greenberg said, was excavated from the same region of China as the other two, but is believed to have been laid by a dinosaur similar to a brontosaurus.
But no one knows the mother's true identity because the shell is all that can be evaluated without destroying the eggs, Greenberg said. Scientists would have to examine the embryo to correctly identify the species, he said.
What the X-ray film images did tell Greenberg was that that egg already had hatched.
"I was a little disappointed there was a hatching hole," Greenberg said.
If the CAT scan shows the remaining two eggs to be whole, Greenberg said, trying to image the embryo would be next. No intact dinosaur fetuses have been photographed yet, he said.
"Trying to see the fetus is at the edge of this technology," Greenberg said.Ayers strapped the eggs to the scanner's table while students and staff joked that it was a good thing to do, just in case the dinosaurs decided - ala Jurassic Park - that now the was time to break free. In a few minutes the scanner would reveal the hidden side of the eggs.
Greenberg said because the tops of eggs broke off when the dinosaur hatched, the eggs were normally excavated from below. Paleontologists left the tops of the eggs encrusted, which shrouded the fact of whether the egg was whole or hatched.
It took about 20 minutes for a cursory scan to be completed. Members of the media and hospital staff filed in the room to hear the verdict:
"It looks like the babies flew the coop in both eggs," Greenberg said as he pointed to a thin white line that represented shell on the computer screen.
The mystery of the eggs cracked, the onlookers dispersed as Ayers completed the scan.
Asked how she felt about the work, Ayers said: "I love it. You get used to the everyday work, like scanning a brain. This was the chance to see a discovery; it's fascinating."
All three eggs will be displayed at Virginia Tech's Museum of Geological Sciences or Museum of Natural History, but the exact dates have not been set. For more information, call the geological museum at (540)231-6029.
LENGTH: Medium: 91 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: GENE DALTON/Staff. William Greenberg, a Virginia Techby CNBmathematics professor, examines two fossilized dinosaur eggs before
they are X-rayed in the university's veterinary center.