digital dinosaurs

[eagseags@cybernex.net (Eleanor Gonnella)]

>Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 11:16:01 -0400
>From: muriel29@wavenet.com (MC2)
>Subject: Sculpting digital dinosaurs

>        The new (May 18 [Vol. 149]) issue of _Science News_ has an
>article on 3-D scanning technology that is used, for example, to scan
>military pilot's bodies for the manufacture of form-fitting flight
>suits and helmets ("Fit for a King," pp.316/7).

In response to the message from T.A. Curtis about the Science News
article on 3D scanning technology, the most interesting thing about
the scanning is that eventually the shape of lots of fossils could be
electronically encoded and put in a central database.  Then, given a
new fossil, one could search the database for "similar" ones.  I am a
computational chemist by trade, and one of the most common tools is
"similarity search" on 2D and 3D representations of molecules. The
computer technology is there and could easily be applied to fossils
instead of molecules.

It is a fantasy of mine that at retirement (20 years from now) I could
work on such a global system. Does anyone know of an effort in this
direction?

Bob Sheridan