Canadian research sheds new light on dinosaurs

A University of Regina physics professor is using modern technology to examine some really old bones — and it all started with his child’s fascination with dinosaurs.

Prof. Mauricio Barbi is using a synchrotron to take a deeper look inside fossils. The machine can look for traces of the original elements that were in the animal while it was alive.

“If I can measure not only the chemistry, but the concentration of elements in bones, different bones, and I can associate that to the environment, maybe I’m going to be able to tell about … the impact of environment on those animals,” Prof. Barbi said recently.

“Maybe I can look at how those concentrations of elements in the bone changed along the time.

“With the synchrotron we can look at these details hopefully and can understand our past, what happened in the past, because those things can happen again.”

A synchrotron is a source of brilliant light that lets scientists study the microstructure and chemical properties of materials. The device at the Canadian Light Source centre at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon is one of the most powerful in the world. According to the centre’s website, the machine can produce synchrotron light that is a million times brighter than sunlight.

It would make sense for a man with a background in high energy physics to use a synchrotron, but why use it to study dinosaur bones?

“That was, let’s put it this way, an accident. The reason for that was my daughter. She loves paleontology. She loves dinosaurs,” Prof. Barbi said as he proudly held up a drawing by Laura, 6, of bright green dinosaurs.

Camping trips to Dinosaur Provincial Park in southeastern Alberta and visits to the T. rex Discovery Centre in the community of Eastend, Sask., rekindled Prof. Barbi’s own childhood love of the extinct creatures. His initial idea was to volunteer to dust off fossils.

But the head of paleontology for the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, Tim Tokaryk, wrote back suggesting they work together instead.

That’s when Prof. Barbi started thinking about using the synchrotron.

“The synchrotron has some advantages over the electron microscope because … the data that we collect is much cleaner than with an electron microscope,” he explained.

“And we can scan a sample … in just one run using some specific synchrotron beams.”

The machine can also help scientists look at the interaction between bones and the surrounding environment and how outside minerals ended up in the bone.

Source:globeandmail