WHAT'S NEW
Image Analysis Software
Helps Question the Evidence for Earth’s Oldest Fossils
Syncroscopy is pleased to announce that Auto-Montage, its unique three-dimensional imaging system is helping researchers to produce accurate full-colour images of the world’s oldest fossils.
Bright field Auto-Montage image of a putative microfossil known as a Pseudoseptate filamentous artefact Primaevifilum amoenum
Scientists in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford are using Auto-Montage to capture and analyse many partially focused images of putative fossil structures embedded in layers of ancient rock. This has resulted in generating highly focused, two-dimensional images of what had been reported as Earth’s oldest fossils, something that has previously been difficult to accomplish with any accuracy.
Owen Green, a Research Scientist in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford said: “Before we had Auto-Montage we used print film and a conventional SLR camera, and would routinely cut and paste the in-focus sections of the images together manually. The completed montage would then have to be re-photographed. This is not an exact science and it was very tricky, as well as time consuming to obtain even an approximation of a focused microfossil image. With Auto-Montage we can capture images at different focal depths in the rock and using the system are able to generate precise in-focus images quickly and simply.”
“To obtain high resolution photomicrographs of ancient fossil structures, some reported to be 3.5 million years old, is very important. This is just one factor enabling scientists to understand conditions on early Earth, and allows those studying Martian meteorites to appreciate the difficulties in recognising biogenic structures, or abiogenic artefacts caused by mineralisation,” explained Green.
Martin Smith, Syncroscopy’s Divisional Sales Manager commented: “To see Auto-Montage being successfully used to re-examine the evidence of the origins of life on Earth at such a well respected university, is a great privilege. This interesting application of Auto-Montage shows it could be useful for any number of mineralogical studies, and would be especially effective where producing images through three-dimensional rock samples is key to determining their true content.”
