Michiel de Groot

@michieldegroot.bsky.social

Evolutionary biologist | PhD candidate at UGent & INBO working on weird parasitic fungi on ladybirds🐞🍄 | Endless freeform jazz most beautiful

We made a few terabytes of images, which were reconstructed to create 3D images over the past couple of years by Michel back in Paris, resulting in this paper! Doesn't it still look like he has the ~99 million year old wind blowing through his antennae?

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The technique to create 3D image out of the microscopy is called micro-tomography, which was what we spent most our time doing. It is useful if you want to look at fragile fossil beetles trapped in amber! Michel Perreau, a French beetle and fossil expert, asked us to image them for him.

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It's a massive complex with a big particle accelerator, which takes a long time to get around - many people had little mopeds or bikes. Particle accelerators produce extremely bright, focused, and tunable X-ray beams, which can be used to "see through" objects and reconstruct the details inside.

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