OpenVertebrate Presents a Massive Database of 13,000 3D Scans of Vertebrate Specimens

From The Flori­da Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry comes the open­Ver­te­brate project, a new ini­tia­tive to “pro­vide free, dig­i­tal 3D ver­te­brate anato­my mod­els and data to researchers, edu­ca­tors, stu­dents and the pub­lic.” Intro­duc­ing the new project (oth­er­wise known as oVert), the muse­um writes:

Between 2017 and 2023, oVert project mem­bers took CT scans of more than 13,000 spec­i­mens, with rep­re­sen­ta­tive species across the ver­te­brate tree of life. This includes more than half the gen­era of all amphib­ians, rep­tiles, fish­es and mam­mals. CT scan­ners use high-ener­gy X‑rays to peer past an organism’s exte­ri­or and view the dense bone struc­ture beneath. Thus, skele­tons make up the major­i­ty of oVert recon­struc­tions. A small num­ber of spec­i­mens were also stained with a tem­po­rary con­trast-enhanc­ing solu­tion that allowed researchers to visu­al­ize soft tis­sues, such as skin, mus­cle and oth­er organs.

The mod­els give an inti­mate look at inter­nal por­tions of a spec­i­men that could pre­vi­ous­ly only be observed through destruc­tive dis­sec­tion and tis­sue sam­pling.

In the com­ing years, the open­Ver­te­brate team will “CT scan 20,000 flu­id-pre­served spec­i­mens from U.S. muse­um col­lec­tions, pro­duc­ing high-res­o­lu­tion anatom­i­cal data for more than 80 per­cent of ver­te­brate gen­era.” The project will also make dig­i­tal images and 3D mesh files avail­able to down­load and 3D print.

The video below pro­vides a short, visu­al intro­duc­tion to the dig­i­tal col­lec­tion. You can learn more about the project here.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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