Animal's Body Preserved for 425 Million Years

Originally posted by TrueBrit
reply to post by OccamsRazor04

 

Fair enough then. I still cannot believe that there are methods we could not have used to make a diagram of this creature, without resorting to its destruction. Why would it not have been possible to use a carefully modulated sound wave, directed at the creature, and then learn its internal secrets from the way its parts echo?

Because there are no parts anymore. It's a solid rock. The pattern of the solid rock is how they created a virtual model. The only way to see the pattern is to scratch the surface. There is no way to do it with todays technology that would preserve it. There is no technology coming down the pipe that would do it.

reply to post by OccamsRazor04


Then we should have preserved it in its current state until we learned enough about scanning objects in a more careful manner. Also, it is clear to me that the actual matter which comprises the remains themselves would be distinct from the matter which it is encased in, in a chemical and material sense, so there should be a way to resonate the object and detect the difference. I cannot believe that we have ground penetrating radar, but that we do not have a tool that could be so deployed!

Originally posted by TrueBrit
reply to post by OccamsRazor04

 

Then we should have preserved it in its current state until we learned enough about scanning objects in a more careful manner. Also, it is clear to me that the actual matter which comprises the remains themselves would be distinct from the matter which it is encased in, in a chemical and material sense, so there should be a way to resonate the object and detect the difference. I cannot believe that we have ground penetrating radar, but that we do not have a tool that could be so deployed!

It's not encased in anything. It's a fossil. So we put it off to the side for 10 years, 20, 50, 100. We can just stop everything until technology gets better. Only technology will never get better without knowledge. It also will ALWAYS be getting better with knowledge, so we will never be at a place where we are now 100% perfect. The fossil is "cool", but it's worthless sitting on a shelf when actual knowledge can be gleaned from it today.