Laser steps in to save footprints

Experts from

are using laser scanning technology to digitally preserve in three dimensions fading dinosaur tracks unearthed in a Spanish quarry.

The Fumanya site, in the Berguedà region of central Catalonia, is so delicate that experts cannot get physically close enough to the tracks to examine them.

In the years since the tracks were discovered they have been exposed to the elements, and as a result are severely weathered and eroding at a rapid rate. To make things even more difficult, the tracks are imprinted into near-vertical rock faces.

Palaeontologists feared the tracks could be lost forever, but a permanent and detailed record has now been created using cutting-edge equipment.

Using a laser scanning system called RIEGL, researchers from The School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental have produced an interactive 3D model of a quarry face covered in thousands of tracks made by the late Cretaceous dinosaurs, including sauropods and possibly predatory theropod dinosaurs.