The Moog said:
Hello, Phil's "doctor of radiography" sister here ....... Joint research anyone?
LOL. I did a few CT's of giant squid (
Architeuthis) several years ago (I have a cobber that is also a radiologist) - in fact they nearly had to be vacate a floor of the hospital because of the smell....

. We are planning to do this again on a different kind of squid (
Moroteuthis) in ~ 5 weeks, and scan a few recently received ammonites (
Rhaeboceras) with aptychus and radular teeth
in situ. I think our problem is one of getting the images into some electronic format that we can post online. Any suggestions Moog?
The CT's of
Architeuthis were rather interesting; it was very nice to observe
in situ the two tiny 'bones' (statoliths) in the ventral surface of the cartilaginous cranium (they're only 2mm in greatest dimension - I was surprised at the resolution of this equipment). At the time I was looking for additional calcareous structures in the squid that might be of value for aging or systematic purposes. The lenses were calcareous - surprising to me then, but I've since learnt this to be true of squid. However, other than the lenses and the statoliths, and a few irregularly distributed small bodies/deposits of carbonate throughout the cranium, no other deposits were found.
What we did find, and did not expect, were 3 very clearly defined cartilaginous zones/bands/layers in the cranium - different densities of cartilage I think Mike (my cobber) said. Hard to know what these represent, but the immediate thought was that they represented three distinct growth stages (we do tend to jump to conclusions - but the change was so abrupt). I guess it means something and that we'll just have to work harder to figure out what it is. I suppose one way of looking at this would be to get squid of a known age and see whether there's any corelation between their age and different densities of cartilage. More study needed!
There was something in the CT's that excited Mike that he thought might have some medical application .... but for the life of me I do not recall (I think it had something to do with the eyes).
The Moog - joint research! Interesting proposition!!
Looking forward to some images online
Cheers
Steve