We have been working with colleagues within GeoSciences to digitally scan dinsosaur trackways on the Isle of Skye. Photogrammetry is an essential tool for identifying dinosaur communities present in globally scarce Middle Jurassic sediments. On the Isle of Skye, several hundred previously undescribed Middle Jurassic dinosaur footprints across multiple track sites were found, photographed at high-resolution, and generated as 3D models by Tone Blakesley, an MScR student in the School of Geosciences at the University of Edinburgh. Tone’s study aims to determine local similarities or differences in dinosaur track assemblages and understand dinosaur behaviour and interaction with the local palaeoenvironment. In April 2023, Tom Wade from ARI and Craig Atkins from the NERC Field Spectroscopy Facility joined Tone to photograph a track site with a 45-megapixel P1 camera attached to a DJI Mavic M300 RTK. The high-resolution imagery was encoded with RTK-corrected GNSS coordinates from a nearby base station to ensure precise geospatial data was preserved. Tone comments, “the photographic capture and subsequent photogrammetric generation of these dinosaur tracks as 3D models ensures their continued preservation... this will also help to raise public awareness of geoconservation... and support the study of the tracks by future palaeontologists.” We were happy to support Tone's fieldwork using our latest ultra-high resolution DJI-Zenmuse P1 camera on our Matrice 300 RTK drone. Operating at the minimum height for automated missions (12 m) we were able to generate an outstanding 3D model and orthomosaic (composite image) of the entire beach area at ~1.5 mm resolution. We also flew manually at a height of 2-3 m over specific areas of interest to generate datasets at ~0.3 mm resolution. As well as the aerial datasets Tone also used our data laboratory to process photogrammetric models of lab-based specimens. This article was published on 2024-06-25
