Enhancing the visibility of fossil tissue structures using UV reflected and UV stimulated visible flourescence photography

A while ago I had the honor to work with Neal Larson on a paper on fossilized cephalopods found in Hajoula, Lebanon. Today it is again about enhancing the visibility of fossil bone and tissue structures using UV reflected and UV stimulated visible fluorescence photography, but as it is some years later, using more modern equipment now. I will also use my remapping technology consisting of a visible image, a reflected UV image and an UV stimulated visible fluorescence image and combine them into multispectral images.

Lens used was my CERCO f4.1 / 94mm quartz fluorite lens, light sources were a modified high power Xenon flash, as well as a NICHIA 365nm Power LED. Target was a fossilized fish from Solnhofen, Germany, approx. 100 Mio years old.

[click on image to see a larger one]

Visible light image using UV/IR Cut filter:


Reflected UV image using Baader-U filter (310-390nm): 


UV stimulated visible fluorescence (FL) using Nichia 365nm UV LED:


Combined VIS - FL multispectral image: 


Combined VIS - UV multispectral image::


Combined FL - UV multispectral image::


It gets nicely visible that using UV light photography brings out much more details than normal visible light photography and by doing so, enhances the visibility of preserved bone and tissue structures quite a bit. Combining those different images into falso color multispectral images  enhances the structures even more.

Stay tuned, more will follow on that fascinating subject...

More info on this very interesting field may be found on my site http://www.pbase.com/kds315/uv_photos

[UV, FL] Enhancing the visibility of fossil cephalopods soft tissue structures

I had the honor to work with Neal Larson (yeah, THAT Neal Larson who discovered SUE, the T-Rex, with his brother Peter) on a paper on fossilized cephalopods found in Hajoula, Lebanon. I used my remapping technology consisting of a visible image (A), a UV stimulated visible fluorescence image (B) to enhance the visibility of preserved soft tissue structures (C) by combining them into one multispectral image.

Should someone be interested in the paper, the full title is:
"A new look at fossil cephalopods", NEAL L. LARSON, ROBERT W. MORTON, PETER L. LARSON AND UWE BERGMANN in
Tanabe, K., Shigeta, Y., Sasaki, T. & Hirano, H. (eds.) 2010. Cephalopods - Present and Past, Tokai University Press, Tokyo, p. 303-314.

Images (c) Neal L Larson and Dr Klaus Schmitt

[click on image to see a larger one]




Another example of the same technique, shots I did with a squid fossil I have here from the Upper Cretaceous period, ca 90 million years old.

Visible light image:

UV stimulated visible fluorescence: 

multispectral remapped 


There is a follow up to this one HERE.

Stay tuned, more will follow on that fascinating subject...

More info on this very interesting field may be found on my site http://www.pbase.com/kds315/uv_photos

UV helps to recover details of fossils

Today it is about fossils. Fossils and UV? Yes, since UV is not only able to resolve about 60% more details than a visual shot due to the shorter wavelength used, it also allows to extract more information by combining a visual and an UV shot into one using my remapping technique.

So lets see this on an example, here an about 100 Million year old squid. The lens used in that case was a calibrated for UV X90 lens plus my famous Baader U-filter (310-390nm) with perfect IR suppression.

[click on image to see a larger version]

Visual shot:



UV shot:



UV remapped into the Visual space:


I find it quite interesting that the remapped image reveals quite a bit more information now and due to the different colors helps to differentiate details of that fossilized squid much easier.

I have written about fossils previously HERE

So I hope you like it as much as I do....

Stay tuned, more will follow on that fascinating subject...

More info on this very interesting field may be found on my site http://www.pbase.com/kds315/uv_photos