An international team of paleontologists, geochemists and physicists led by Dr. R. A. Wogelius (University of Manchester, UK) recently employed X-ray fluorescence imaging to analyze a 150 million year old fossil of Archaeopteryx, which had dinosaur-like teeth and bird-like feathers. For many years, it was believed that the fossil contained nothing but bone and rock. However, the use of a brilliant synchrotron X-ray beam enabled the detection of chemical elements hidden within. It was found that the fossil still had elemental compositions that were completely different from the embedding geological matrix. The researchers completed the chemical map of the dinobird for 12 elements for the first time. Some phosphor and sulfur were found in soft tissue, as well as trace zinc and copper in bone. The experiment was done at wiggler beam line 6-2 at Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL, California, USA). For more information, see the paper, "Archaeopteryx feathers and bone chemistry fully revealed via synchrotron imaging", U. Bergmann et al., Proc. Nat. Aca. Sci., 107, 9060 (2010).
