Natural history collections are invaluable reference collections. Digitizing these collections is a transformative process that improves the accessibility, preservation, and exploitation of specimens and associated data in the long term. Arthropods make up the majority of zoological collections. However, arthropods are small, have detailed color textures and share small, complex and shiny structures, which poses a challenge to conventional digitization methods. Sphaeroptica is a multi-images viewer that uses a sphere of oriented images. It allows the visualization of insects including their tiniest features, the positioning of landmarks, and the extraction of 3D coordinates for measuring linear distances or for use in geometric morphometrics analysis. The quantitative comparisons show that the measures obtained with Sphaeroptica are similar to the measurements derived from 3D μCT models with an average difference inferior to 1\%, while featuring the high resolution of color stacked pictures with all details like setae, chaetae, scales, and other small and/or complex structures. Shaeroptica was developed for the digitization of small arthropods but it can be used with any sphere of aligned images resulting from the digitization of objects or specimens with complex surface and shining, black, or translucent texture which cannot easily be digitized using structured light scanner or Structure-from-Motion (SfM) photogrammetry.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2024 OA
Perissodactyls were a diverse order of mammals in the Northern Hemisphere during the Paleogene, but very few species remain today. They first appear during the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM; 56 Ma) on the three continents of the Northern Hemisphere. Because they lack modern diversity, the study of their evolutionary history remains difficult, relying almost exclusively on fossils. In addition, their origin and early diversification remain elusive since all main groups appear at the same time with several genera and are already diverse, contrary to other modern mammal orders. Here, we investigate the early evolution of perissodactyls by analyzing a new dataset focusing on early species to obtain a new expansive phylogeny. This new topology, in combination with new observations and comparisons demonstrates that several genera are synonymous, simplifying the evolutionary picture of early perissodactyls. We show that the number of genera was overestimated and should be significantly reevaluated. These results also highlight fast dispersals of two genera, Pliolophus and Cardiolophus, on the three Northern continents, reflecting that of other modern mammals. The phylogeny also supports a potential Indo-Pakistani origin of perissodactyls. In addition, this large-scale phylogeny shows that many species that were named as “Hyracotherium” in the past (or sometimes “Eohippus”, the “dawn-horse”) and considered as “horses”, are not actually closely related to horses (Hippomorpha), including Hyracotherium itself, but can be considered as basal perissodactyls.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2026 OA
