Virtual reality dinos (+ von Daniken)

[Phillip Bigelow <n8010095@henson.cc.wwu.edu>]

Tom Holtz wrote:
>Did you ever notice how nobody invokes cosmic explosions (or ancient
>astronauts) as the inspiration for the Parthenon, or the Colosseum, or
>Gothic cathedrals?

  How naive' of you Tom! By then, we were already enslaved by our
extraterrestrial masters, who forced us to do their bidding by having us use
our primitive, yet charmingly-crafted human tools.   :-)
                       ----------------------------------------------- 
Now how about getting back to dinosaurs (or at least paleontology)? 
So that I am not wasting bandwidth on non-dinosaur related pseudo-science
of von Danekin et al.  :-), here is something that may be of potential 
interest to the dinosaur museums in the near future: 
  This is a re-dredge up of a thread started by Larry Smith a while back.
In the latest issue of _Discover_ magazine, (their annual "best innovations"
issue May?, 1995), they report on a new laser scanner/software package that has
potential implications for paleontology (or at least I infer it would).
  Dr. Tony DeRose, professor of computer science and engineering at the
University of Washington in Seattle, has refined a computer/laser
scanner/software package that scans 3D surface outlines of any physical
object, even complex ones with curves and multiple edges or planes.  The
software then reconstructs the image in 3D-space in computer memory.
Virtual reality software can rotate the image in any direction for any
perspective.
  Questions:  If fossil collections ever get scanned into this system, would
they/should they be transmitted over the internet?

Should museum curators maintain tight control over who can study these
images? (considering that hi-res rotatable 3D images will be nearly as good as
the real bones). 

Should museums maintain some type of copyright on the images of fossils in
their collection? 

If a researcher studies comparative specimens in virtual reality, rather
than travelling to the museum, would that constitute officially "personally
examining the specimen"?  (essentially, this is how researchers are now
working with the Hubble Space Telescope.  They don't have to travel to the
control room in Maryland to use Hubble; they can do it all from their home
institutions.)  

And for Dr. Farlow:  Got $50K on you?   
This should also brighten the futures of those who study fossil trackways,
because if this 3-D scanner ever becomes portable, it could make plaster
casts of fossil tracks less necessary.  You could have a track set stored on
an optical disk.  Takes up less space (less filling)-  Tastes great. 

The down-side: Dr. DeRose claims that the laser prototype presently costs
$50K.  Price will come down, but by how much, who knows?