CUHK Research: Changing the world

lead author of the study. “Our discovery has moved the field closer to accurately reconstructing early flight capabilities.” In the study, the team applied LSF to more than 1,000 fossils of early theropod flyers that lived during the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous periods in what is now northeastern China. The specimens came from the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature on the mainland, with which Professor Pittman maintains a long-term working relationship. Professor Pittman is regularly invited to study fossils in museums and universities around the world using LSF. His work featured in a special exhibition at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo this year. His LSF technique has also been applied by international researchers in the study of early birds and other animal groups, such as ammonites. His LSF work extends beyond palaeontology to archaeology. Professor Pittman also conducts regular fieldwork in the Gobi Desert, which led to the discovery of two dinosaur species, and in the Patagonian Desert, where he investigates the Gondwanan dinosaur ecosystems. Our discovery has moved the field closer to accurately reconstructing early flight capabilities. This can outline the body and show details of the skin and other soft tissues at levels of precision that were previously impossible. In addition, LSF can show differences in the chemical composition of fossils, as the laser beam shining on a specimen interacts with the minerals that make up a fossil. “With LSF, we have been able to put flesh back on the bones and find information that UV cannot,” he says. Discoveries and collaborations The CUHK team, in collaboration with experts from mainland China and United States, has discovered key information about the origin of the modern flight system of birds in a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last year. “Birds today fly using muscles that are all on their chest. Using LSF, my team can now see elusive soft tissues that are rarely preserved in the fossils of early birds and validate earlier speculation that flying dinosaurs used not just muscles on the chest, but also muscles on the shoulders,” says Professor Pittman, LSF image of the Confuciusornis , showing large shoulders that powered the wing upstroke 77