PZ Myers. 2005 Aug 17. Silurian brachiopod. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/silurian_brachiopod/>. Accessed 2008 Nov 20.

Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Silurian brachiopod

I'm a sucker for these things, especially since I'm going to be able to imagine thousands of people all around the world sticking their faces in their monitors and squinting. This is a computer reconstruction of a 425 million year old brachiopod—it's a sort of clam on a stalk (but definitely not a clam—it's from a whole 'nother phylum altogether). This specimen is special because it fortuitously preserved many of the soft parts of the animal, and then by taking serial thin slices through it and reassembling them on a computer, they made a 3-D model of it. Fun, huh?

Here's the real entertaining bit: the pictures on the left are stereo pairs. If you click on the image, you'll get a larger picture that will be easier to work with. Then all you have to do is get your face about 6 inches from the screen, defocus your eyes or look through the plane of the screen, and then mentally fuse the paired images. Voilà, you should see a multicolored three-dimensional extinct brachiopod floating in space in front of you. If you've always been frustrated by those "Magic Eye" books and can't fuse the pairs, well, your head will be in a perfect position to pound against your monitor.

silurian brachiopod
a−c, e−i, k, OUM C.29586; holotype of Bethia serraticulma (a−c and e−i are 'virtual' reconstructions): ventral stereo pair (a); right lateral view (b); dorsal view (c); subanterior internal stereo pair, ventral valve removed (e); posterior view, pedicle and epifauna removed (f); dorsal stereo pair of internal of ventral valve, all structures removed except lophophore tentacles (g)—note that the removed 'internal mass' may incorporate hard-part structures, so the simple internal valve morphology may be an artefact; anterior view (h); posterior stereo pair of pedicle, skeletal debris removed (i); photograph before serial grinding (k). d, OUM C.29589; attached ?atrypide B1, 'virtual' reconstruction, dorsal stereo pair. j, ventral stereo-pair diagram of idealized lophophore of B. serraticulma, tentacle sparsity and length exaggerated for clarity, posterior up. Scale bars, 1 mm. Abbreviations: B1−B3, attached brachiopods OUM C.29589−29591, respectively; DI, dorsal interarea; DP, deltidial plates; DS, ?diductor muscle scars; DV, dorsal valve; E1 and E2, encrusting organisms OUM C.29592 and 29593, respectively; GL, growth lamellae; Lo, lophophore; LT, lophophore tentacle; Ma, mantle; P, pedicle; PR, pedicle rootlets; Pr, protegulum; RP, 'removed pedicle' (this region, obscured by the pedicle, is interpreted as an open delthyrium); Se, setae; SD, skeletal debris (to which B. serraticulma is attached); Su, sulcus; VI, ventral interarea; VL, visceral lobes; VV, ventral valve.

Isn't it pretty?

Sutton MD, Briggs DEG, Siveter DJ, Siveter DJ (2005) Silurian brachiopods with soft-tissue preservation. Nature 436:1013-1015.

Posted by PZ Myers on 08/17 at 02:12 PM
Science • EvoDevo • Organisms • 0 Trackbacks • Other weblogs • Permalink
  1. Awesome, this is the first magic-eye type stereogram that i've ever managed to get to work properly!

    PZ, do you know if publishing stereograms is typical for this sort of imaging, or was this sort of a "hey lets try something weird"?
    #: Posted by notheory  on  08/17  at  02:27 PM
  2. I despise you Magic Eye-seers! Come the revolution you smug gits will be the first up against the wall! smile
    #: Posted by Ithika  on  08/17  at  02:34 PM
  3. It's quite common. Particularly in some of the neuro and histo journals I read, it's not unusual to have stereo pairs in every issue.
    #: Posted by PZ Myers  on  08/17  at  02:36 PM
  4. Coolest. Thing. EVER!

    I never realized these things were useful before.
    #: Posted by lucky&pozzo  on  08/17  at  02:47 PM
  5. I get it to be 3-D but then I can't focus!! And then I feel kind of sick...
    #: Posted by  on  08/17  at  02:56 PM
  6. Headache city. Pretty as those little guys are, I'm not even going to try. I've come to the perfectly rational conclusion that the Magic Eye posters are a hoax and a plot personally directed against me. Even my husband and my friends are in on the plot, claiming to be able to see Starship Enterprises and New York skylines and brachiopods instead of nausea-inducing little colored squiggles. Blech.
    #: Posted by  on  08/17  at  03:16 PM
  7. Works for me. Gorgeous!
    #: Posted by coturnix  on  08/17  at  03:31 PM
  8. I'm seeing a crying need for a 3D brachiopod virtual reality application.
    #: Posted by Raven  on  08/17  at  03:34 PM
  9. Hands-down the coolest thing I've seen all day. Thanks.
    #: Posted by  on  08/17  at  03:55 PM
  10. You should see the stereograms of silicified, Upper- Ordovician trilobite sclerites in the 1950s publications of Harry Whittington treating the Shenandoah Valley fauna from Virginia. I have a large collection of these beautiful trilobite exoskeletal parts I etched free of the argillaceous limestone matrix and so can see them in three dimensions by opening a drawer to view the real things.
    #: Posted by  on  08/17  at  04:26 PM
  11. I despise you Magic Eye-seers! Come the revolution you smug gits will be the first up against the wall!


    The only way I'vr ever been able to see those things is to cross my eyes.

    ... but then again, maybe I'm just getting old.
    #: Posted by  on  08/17  at  04:33 PM
  12. Looking at the third pair from the top, I think I recognize something I ate the other night. What was that expiration date again?
    #: Posted by bill  on  08/17  at  06:51 PM
  13. Wow! Very cool. All those years of mapping using grainy black and white stereo air photos is finally useful! Thanks for the picture, PZ! Brachiopods in Stereo - excellent!
    #: Posted by Jo Fish  on  08/17  at  07:12 PM
  14. Very cool.

    #36176: PZ Myers — 08/17 at 02:36 PM
    It's quite common. Particularly in some of the neuro and histo journals I read, it's not unusual to have stereo pairs in every issue.

    Would it be wrong to get the journals just to look at the pretty pictures?
    #: Posted by  on  08/17  at  07:53 PM
  15. I prefer cross-eyed stereo pairs for free viewing, as I can almost never get it to fuse the other way without a viewer. I can fix it for my preference in Photoshop so I don't complain, when there is something like ten per cent of the population that has no depth perception at all.

    Stereopsis tops my list of ways to make 3D modeling and animation easier, even over haptic feedback devices which are starting to show up now in the affordable and widely implemented range. With better faster cheaper graphics processors every day, there's little reason not to make sure an application can drive a pair of cheap shutter glasses.
    #: Posted by Ken Cope  on  08/17  at  07:59 PM
  16. I wear reading glasses. It works best with them removed. (scary thing is, it is a sharp picture... OK, I squinted a little)
    Really cool. Thanks
    #: Posted by  on  08/17  at  08:40 PM
  17. One of the many embarrassing incidents in my life was encouraging a friend who has a glass eye to see a Magic Eye picture. How was I to know it wouldn't work? I mean it's called Magic Eye not Eyes, goddammit! It should have worked! Especially since he could use his finger to cross his eyes whenever he wanted to!
    #: Posted by  on  08/18  at  01:28 AM
  18. Cool.

    I just take my glasses off (20/400 or worse) and close in.
    #: Posted by  on  08/18  at  08:05 AM
  19. Toot sweet!

    Magic Eye sux compared to high quality 'stereo pair' images. Another place to find lots of high quality stereo pair images is in structural biology journals (e.g. Nature Structural Biology)
    example 1
    example 2
    example 3


    It may take a bit of practice, you need to learn to decouple eyeball divergence and focus. That's why it may be easier for near-sighted people if they take off their glasses.

    BTW, putting the labels on only one of a pair of images distracts from the stereo effect. With practice and good software, it should be possible to place the labels in 3D.
    #: Posted by  on  08/18  at  08:50 AM
  20. Very cool. Brach's mix in 3D...
    #: Posted by  on  08/18  at  01:03 PM
  21. there is a truly good method for online science images in full color 3D. Check out http://www.anachrome.com
































    There is a new 3D format begin used for animations and
    still images that uses plastic optically advanced glasses.
    the images are very tightly composed to reduce artifacts.
    Most look O.K. without glasses but turn to 3D with them.
    Variuous museum objects and some natural history examples can be seen on http://www.anachrome.com Please check it out as
    the images cn be seen full screen and with good color.
    #: Posted by Allan Silliphant  on  08/19  at  09:46 AM