The Museum für Naturkunde Berlin once again invited you to the Digital Science Communication Café. Get ready to get exciting insights from our scientist into their work while drinking coffee in front of the screens in a relaxed atmosphere.
For the last edition of the year, we invited Dr. Verónica Díez Díaz, postdoctoral researcher in #palaeontology at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. She is currently starting her new German Research Foundation (DFG) project, in which she aims to understand the #biomechanical patterns of several sauropod taxa, by studying the locomotion of their hindlimbs and tails. Sauropods had very long necks, long tails, small heads (relative to the rest of their body), and four thick, pillar-like legs. They are notable for the enormous sizes attained by some species, and the group includes the largest animals to have ever lived on land.
Thanks to digitization, 3D musculoskeletal reconstructions and biomechanical analyses she will develop 3D models which could help us to better understand how these huge #dinosaurs moved. Verónica also aims to calibrate these models by comparing the created digital tracks with the fossil ones.
Besides, Verónica is an advocate on best practices regarding the creation, storing and publication of digital data in palaeontology. She has been assessing some #3D surface #digitization techniques (i.e. photogrammetry and structured light 3D scanning) in the vertebrate palaeontology collection of the MfN, looking for efficient methods for digitizing the specimens, but also looking for the highest quality possible of the created 3D models.
More information: Museum für Naturkunde Berlin
