Open Access

Lucas Siqueira Rodrigues, Thomas Kosch, John Nyakatura, Stefan Zachow, Johann Habakuk Israel

• Although digital methods have significantly advanced morphology, practitioners are still challenged to understand and process tomographic data of specimens. As automated processing of fossil data is still insufficient, morphologists still engage in intensive manual work to digitally prepare fossils for research objectives. We present an open-source tool that enables morphologists to explore tomographic data similarly to the physical workflows that traditional fossil preparators experience in the field. Using questionnaires, we assessed the usability of our prototype for virtual fossil preparation and related common tasks in the digital preparation workflow. Our findings indicate that integrating haptics into the virtual preparation workflow enhances the understanding of the morphology and material properties of working specimens and that the visuohaptic sculpting of fossil volumes is straightforward and is an improvement over current digital specimen processing methods.