Beauty in a speck of dust

Phosphatized pre-Cambrian embryos are cool. It's amazing that they've been preserved at all, and they are spectacularly gorgeous. We can learn about the evolution of development from their superficial appearance, but what we really want to do is poke around their interiors and analyze them cell by cell, something that has been hard to do without destroying them in the process. Until now.

A report in Nature (and a too short mention on a researcher's web page) describes the application of synchrotron X-ray tomographic microscopy (SRXTM) to these fossilized embryos to resolve their internal structure. It's a powerful tool, and it's generating some beautiful images.

Continue reading "Beauty in a speck of dust" (on Pharyngula)