{"id":2360,"date":"2022-12-10T13:20:19","date_gmt":"2022-12-10T18:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/makerspace\/?p=2360"},"modified":"2026-02-11T16:44:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T21:44:09","slug":"preserving-the-past-with-pixels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/makerspace\/projects\/preserving-the-past-with-pixels\/","title":{"rendered":"Cave Bear Tooth: Preserving the Past with Pixels"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>

A prehistoric cave bear tooth (a molar), excavated from Divje Babe, a cave site in Slovenia that also houses evidence of Neanderthal activity. The tooth is estimated to be 80,000 years old.<\/p><\/div>\n

What happens when a scientific technique meant to illuminate the past threatens to erase it? That\u2019s the puzzle at the heart of an interdisciplinary project at Williams College, where Chemistry Senior Lecturer Anne Skinner and a team of Makerspace collaborators including Sebastian Tabit \u201825, Sam Samuel \u201826, Alessandra Menj\u00edvar \u201826, Camily Hidalgo \u201826, Tazmin Appiah \u201825, and myself set out to solve a very modern problem using very ancient material.<\/p>\n

The object in question? A prehistoric cave bear tooth, excavated from Divje Babe, a cave site in Slovenia that also houses evidence of Neanderthal activity. The tooth is estimated to be 80,000 years old\u2014far beyond the limits of radiocarbon dating.<\/p>\n

Enter Electron Spin Resonance<\/em> (ESR) dating, the technique Anne specializes in. ESR is powerful because it can measure radiation damage in buried objects up to several hundred thousand years old, making it one of the few methods capable of dating a sample this old. But here\u2019s the catch: ESR dating destroys the sample. Once the tooth is tested, it’s gone forever.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A prehistoric cave bear tooth (a molar), excavated from Divje Babe, a cave site in Slovenia that also houses evidence of Neanderthal activity. The tooth is estimated to be 80,000 years old.<\/p><\/div>\n

So, how do you preserve something that can\u2019t be preserved?<\/p>\n

The Solution: Photogrammetry and High-Resolution 3D Printing<\/h2>\n
\"The<\/a>

The Metashape software displays “orbits” of the many flat digital photos that were required to accurately construct the 3D object of the tooth (viewable in the center of the photo).<\/p><\/div>\n

Before an object like this tooth is subjected to ESR, we set out to create a permanent, high-resolution, 360-degree digital record of it. Our goal: generate a 3D model so detailed that paleontologists decades from now could examine the tooth\u2019s grooves and ridges as closely as if they held the original.<\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t just an exercise in academic curiosity. Teeth are one of the most species-specific anatomical features in mammals. Species designations often hinge on subtle differences in tooth structure. Given that mammal species are generally constrained by both time and environment, the ability to revisit the shape of this tooth even digitally is essential to maintaining scientific accuracy.<\/p>\n

Beth Fischer, Assistant Curator of Digital Learning and Research at the Williams College Museum of Art, led two photogrammetry workshops that covered photography and using the Agisoft Metashape<\/a> software. These workshops were well attended and incredibly helpful to us.<\/p>\n

\"These<\/a>

These are views of the digital model within Metashape’s software. Clockwise from top left:
(1) a wireframe of 203,000 triangular vertices; (2) a color map that represents the software’s confidence in the digital reconstruction (blue = high confidence, red = low confidence); (3) a solid rendering of the object; (4) a model that includes color texturing.<\/p><\/div>\n

Using photogrammetry, a technique where detailed 3D models are made by stitching together a series\u2014typically between 60 and 300\u2014of high-resolution photos, we generated a complete digital scan of the tooth. This method is especially powerful in the field, where researchers may only have time to snap photos before reburial or transfer.<\/p>\n

Anne\u2019s verdict? The Makerspace\u2019s digital rendering of the cave bear tooth was \u201chighly satisfactory.\u201d Even the resulting resin 3D print produced with the Science Shop\u2019s in-house Stratasys printer was \u201cquite satisfactory and usable.\u201d However, our rapid FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) 3D print of standard PLA, while helpful for quick prototypes, lacked the fine detail required for scientific documentation.<\/p>\n

What We Learned (and What Comes Next)<\/h2>\n

This project was as much about process as it was about product. We asked:<\/p>\n