Support us | Visit us | Contact us A CFD model of fl ow over
this graptolite, showing the pattern of water velocity. Flow in
this instance is from bottom to top of the image. Warmer colours
indicate more rapid flow. Ms Emma Passmore and Dr Susan
RigbyUniversity of Edinburgh Novel engineering techniques are
bringing new life to extinct organisms that lived on Earth over
350 million years ago. New images of a form of plankton known as
graptolites, are uncovering how their structure influenced the
way they moved and fed in oceans that have long since
disappeared from Earth. 'The eerily beautiful images our
techniques create reveal how water flows around graptolites and
how the flow changes as the graptolite structure changes,'
explains Sue Rigby a palaeontologist at the University of
Edinburgh. Fossils of graptolites show they were colonies of
plankton with the individual members of the colony or zooids
being part of an overall branching structure. 'Although
graptolites could have eight or more branches the ones