Morphometrics:
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What is "morphometrics"? |
morphos: shape, or form
metric: measurement
The first thing that anyone notices about a fossil is their shape. The shape of a fossil tells us a great deal about the original organism. The science of morphometrics is the study of the organism's shape, by measuring the organism.
Why measure fossils? |
Some of the most informative information we get from fossils is their shape: this fossil is short and squat, whereas that one is tall and skinny, or that one is a neat spiral but this one is straight. Words like "short" or "straight" are descriptive and relative: something is straight relative to something that is less so. We use measurement in an attempt to move the observations we make from the descriptive to a absolute: something isn't just long, it's 28.5 cm long. When we use measurements, we can make more detailed observations, and we can make more precise predictions and tests from our hypothesis.