Filtern
Erscheinungsjahr
- 2011 (4) (entfernen)
Dokumenttyp
- Zeitschriftenartikel (4) (entfernen)
Sprache
- Englisch (4)
Schlagworte
- Abri Pataud (1)
- Arachnida (1)
- Casting (1)
- Defects (1)
- Eurypterida (1)
- Evolution (1)
- Final Gravettian (1)
- Fossil (1)
- Gravettien final (1)
- Ivoire de mammouth (1)
Invasion of the land by arachnids required adaptations of numerous organs, such as gills evolving into lungs, as well as mechanisms facilitating sperm transfer in a terrestrial environment. Many modern arachnids use spermatophores for this purpose, i.e. sperm transmitters detached from the body. Exceptionally preserved Silurian (423 Ma) fossils of Eurypterus tetragonophthalmus Fischer, 1839 (Chelicerata: Eurypterida) preserve so-called horn organs which we here demonstrate as being equivalent to the spermatophore-producing parts of the genital tract in certain modern arachnids. This clarifies a long-running debate about sexing eurypterids based on the shape of the median abdominal (or genital) appendage. To our knowledge this is also the oldest direct evidence for spermatophoremediated sperm transfer in the fossil record and suggests that eurypterids had evolved mating techniques using spermatophores as early as the Silurian, a valuable prerequisite for life on land. Spermatophores are absent in sea spiders (Pycnogonida) and horseshoe crabs (Xiphosura); thus the shared presence of sclerotized sperm-transfer devices in eurypterids and arachnids is a novel character, newly elucidated here,which offers explicit support for (Eurypterida + Arachnida). For this clade the name Sclerophorata n. nov. is proposed. Arachnida can be further defined by fusion of the originally paired genital opening.
Archaeological bone, ivory and antler, as well as objects manufactured from them, are largely studied to extract as much information as possible from these materials. Among others, one key question in archaeology is the exact identification of the material. Even if the identification of different kinds of osseous material seems to be trivial in many cases, it can be a difficult issue when small, heavily carved and more or less altered ancient objects are concerned. This study was focused on the determination of parameters allowing the distinction of archaeological ivory, bone and antler in order to identify the raw material used for the manufacture of prehistoric objects. The high performance of synchrotron radiation (SR) and laboratory-based micro X-ray computed tomography (microCT), providing highly resolved three-dimensional information on the micromorphology, permitted the establishment of such distinctive features of modern references of ivory, antler, land mammal and whale bones: ivory shows characteristic tubular pores with a diameter of about 1 to 2 µm, bone and antler show typical osteon structures. In our measured references, antler shows on average larger and more elongated shaped pores of the osteons compared to terrestrial mammal bone. This feature however depends very much on the original localization of the studied sample within the antler. Whale bones can be distinguished from the other osseous materials by a cancellous, osteoporotic-like structure with irregularly distributed rounded porosities with diameters reaching up to 500 µm. These characteristics have also been tested on determined Palaeolithic fragments, as diagenetic changes during burial have to be considered and may lead to the modification of the parameters established on the basis of modern bone references. In general, the chemical composition of bone objects can change drastically over time while micromorphological features, as evidenced by microCT, seem to be less susceptible to such alterations. In addition, microCT enables the comparison of inner and possibly less altered parts of the objects, and can be considered as completely non-destructive for small mineralised prehistoric objects. In this study, specific morphological features allowing the distinction of ivory and of whale bone from other bone and antler material were determined, even for altered materials dating back to Palaeolithic periods. Thus, we provide, in addition to archaeozoological, chemical and isotopic markers, a new non-destructive tool to identify some raw materials used for the fabrication of osseous objects ranging from recent to prehistoric periods.
The Final Gravettian level (level 2) of the abri Pataud (Dordogne, France) yielded a large assemblage of body ornaments that consists essentially of 85 quite standardized rectangular beads. Some uncertainty remained about the raw material in which these small beads were made: mammoth ivory, reindeer antler or bone? Non-invasive methods were employed in order to determine the raw material. First chemical analyses using microbeam Proton Induced X-ray Emission analysis (microPIXE) did not enable us to conclude definitively. Therefore, synchrotron and laboratory X-ray microtomography (microCT) were applied on eight beads and allowed us to identify ivory for all of them except for one, which shows slightly different morphological features.
We present a modified aluminium casting which is especially suited as test piece for measuring casting defects and the geometry by means of cone-beam micro-focus X-ray systems, and which may become a reference standard for dimensional measurements and defect detection.
To obtain a test piece with inner geometries measured by tactile means, we divided a small aluminium cylinder head into four pieces in such a way that most inner surfaces can be reached with a tactile probe. Reference geometries (spheres and cylinders) were applied to define a coordinate system for aligning the measurements in the disassembled and re-assembled state. The four pieces were re-assembled after the tactile measurement.
The test piece also contains casting defects. In order to be able to use the assembled cylinder head as reference sample for defect detection, measurements with higher spatial resolution and better signal-to-noise ratio were performed on the single parts. For improving the reliability of the reference measurements, CT measurements of each part were carried out in three different orientations, and the individual defect detections were combined to obtain a reference data set with a high probability of defect detection and a low rate of erroneous detections.
A new method for comparing the defect detection in a CT measurement to a reference data set is demonstrated, which provides individual information on every detected flaw.
We discuss the results of measurements in the assembled state with respect to the reference data for flaw detection.