- The openVertebrate Project, a.k.a oVert, CT scanned the innards of over 13,000 museum specimens.
- Their newly published images let you see inside lizards, birds, rodents, and more.
- Over the next four years, the oVert team plans to CT scan 20,000 more museum specimens.
Ever wish you had X-ray vision?
The openVertebrate project, or oVert for short, is built on the next best thing: CT scanning.
Over the last six years, this project has partnered with 18 institutions to scan the innards of over 13,000 museum specimens.
But they won’t stop there. The project’s team plans to ramp things up to produce 20,000 scans over the next four years.
Their 3-D images showcase the intricate biodiversity of thousands of animal species.
“When people first collected these specimens, they had no idea what the future would hold for them,” Edward Stanley, the project’s co-principal investigator, said in a press release.
The project’s mission is to improve the accessibility of museum specimens, and oVert has made their images publicly available so that researchers, and anyone curious about animal anatomy, can learn from them.
“If you require someone to get on a plane and travel to you to collaborate, that’s prohibitive in a lot of ways,” David Blackburn, the project’s lead principal investigator, said in the press release.
“Now we have scientists, teachers, students, and artists around the world using these data remotely,” Blackburn said.
