3D scanning our collections

Today, more than ever before, it is vital that we find new ways of sharing our collections in the virtual world, as well as the physical one. This post is the first in a series of posts showing ways in which you can access the BGS collections from the comfort of your own home or office.

The collections team has recently taken delivery of a new tool to help us in the digitisation of our collection. An Artec Space Spider joins our existing NextEngine laser scanners which we use to create 3D models of objects. Compared to the older hardware, our new scanner expands our capabilities greatly:

• It's portable. Combined with a laptop this allows us to head into the stores and scan some of our larger items without having to move them far from their cabinets.

Scanning a large ammonite in the BGS core store

• It's quicker. Scans of typical "hand specimen" sized objects now take around 15 minutes rather than the hour or more that it previously took.

• Better detail. Typical scanning resolution is between 0.1 and 0.3mm which means that even fine details are visible in fossils. And we can apply a colour layer to the scan surface to accurately reflect the appearance of the original object.

Processing the scanned data

So how does this look in practice? Tom, a geology student at the University of Leicester, volunteered with us for several months, in between his studies. In that time, he undertook to scan representative examples of zonal ammonites in our collection.

These species are very important because they allow correlation of the relative ages of rock layers between different locations, so wherever in the world you find a given zonal species, you can be sure that you are looking at rocks of the same age. For example, geologists in the field would look for the first occurrence of the ammonite Psiloceras planorbis to mark the very start of the Jurassic period, although the situation is actually a little more complicated…

Tom scanned the ammonites using both our NextEngine and Spider scanners, with colour texturing turned off so that differences in the preservation of the specimens would not affect the perception of form of the fossils. He then uploaded them to Sketchfab, where they can be viewed in a web browser.

Comparing Lower Jurassic Zonal Ammonites

So the next time you're in the field, and can't remember your obtusum from your oxynoticeras, then load up our virtual collection at https://sketchfab.com/3dFossils/collections/jurassic-zonal-ammonites to make sure.

GSM 24881 Pleuroceras Ammonite 500K

Simon Harris
Collections Conservation and Digitisation Manager