Quantitative CT of dinosaur bones

To develop a protocol for CT examinations of fossilized saurian bones and to provide paleontologists with morphometric and densitometric data suitable for functional analysis, four isolated long bones of Tendaguru dinosaurs from the Museum for Natural Sciences of the Humboldt University of Berlin were examined by CT. The demonstration of fossils in the axial CT proved optimal with the window set at a center of 2,640 Hounsfield units (HU) and a width of 1,040 HU. The petrified bones have a maximum density of 3,000 HU. The shape and structure of the skeletal remnants suggest that the extremities of Tendaguru dinosaurs were submitted to mainly compression but nearly no bending stress.