Three Dimensional Model
Often just the timescales that scientists are working with make us think. Dr Mark Sutton and a team of researchers from the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London have created a three dimensional model from a fossil. The creature is called a Drakozoon and it lived in the ocean during the Silurian Period around 416 to 444 million years ago.

Highly significant finds
The Drakozoon, approximately 3mm long, was discovered about six years ago in what’s called the Herefordshire Lagerstätte, a site rich in soft-bodied fossils. Though such creatures would normally decompose, this area was covered in volcanic ash which preserved it. ‘The bulk of my research,’ says Dr Sutton, ‘is based around this one deposit in Herefordshire. For the past ten years we have been trying to work through all the weird and wonderful things that are there, trying to work out what on earth they are.’ These fossils are new to science and most are significant, but the challenge is to discover the exact significance.

New odd things
This model was created by taking the fossil and grinding it away a slice at a time, taking photos, then reconstructing it on a computer. The Drakozoon was actually attached to another specimen, ‘we had this one with larger brachiopods that it was attached to, but we also didn’t know what it was. We were a bit misled because it had this big blob sticking off it which we originally assumed was part of the creature,’ It only became clear after they had ground it out and recreated it in 3D. ‘One of the lessons we’ve learned,’ says Dr Sutton, ‘is that you can’t work these things out from random three dimensional splits through them, you’ve got to see the whole thing in 3D. It turns out to have an odd morphology, it’s not particularly close to any living creature. It’s got a coiled head for feeding organs which suggest immediately it is somewhere around the brachiopods.’ Brachiopods are creatures with a shell as the top and bottom surface. There’s a lot more to be reconstructed from this fossil deposit, ‘there’s quite a diverse fauna,’ says Dr Suttton, ‘the more we look, the more we find new odd things.’