Archaeoraptor was announced by National Geographic Magazine as a "missing link" and "perhaps the best evidence since Archaeopteryx that birds did, in fact, evolve from certain types of carnivorous dinosaurs." It reportedly came from Early Cretaceous beds of China that have produced other spectacular fossils transitional between birds and extinct non-avian dinosaurs. But several lines of evidence revealed Archaeoraptor to be a forgery in which bones of a primitive bird and a non-flying dromaeosaurid dinosaur were combined. Tragically, this case is not unique. Paleontology was badly damaged by the Piltdown forgery, the "lying stones" of Johann Beringer, and other less notorious cases. Moreover, whether unwittingly or maliciously, many other fossils have been subjected to varying levels of deceptive reconstruction. For all these specimens, knowing their histories of human handling can be critical to proper interpretation. Here we demonstrate that high-resolution X-ray computed tomography (CT) is a powerful forensic tool for paleontologists. By imaging the fracture pattern and distribution of materials through the entire volume of the specimen, CT data revealed how the Archaeoraptor forgery was built. To see the steps taken in the construction of this forgery, click here.

This is a reconstruction of the specimen without the slab. The upper portion in brown represents
the verified portion of the fossil, while the lower portion in teal represents the unverified portion.
Quicktime movie of the Archaeoraptor slab, sliced in planes parallel to the slab surface. For this animation, a digital volumetric model of the entire slab was made from the original slice data in Voxblast, and then re-sliced at an axis orthogonal to the slab. The last frames of the backing slab were deleted to facilitate Web delivery. To download a larger gif version, click here (file size: 873KB). To download a larger Quicktime version of the animation, click here (file size: 3.15MB).



To learn more about Archaeoraptor, you can visit the following links:
http://www.ctlab.geo.utexas.edu/pubs/nature2000/
http://www.nature.com


©1998-2003

Last updated by Farrah Welch
28 NOV 2000