While waiting in the checkout line, Conroy browsed through the adjacent stacks of magazines and tabloids. He was taken with the cover of Discover magazine, which featured Vannier's imaging techniques. "There was a colorful cover photo of a computer image of a human skull," says Conroy, who at the time was hoping to find a noninvasive method to differentiate mineralized bone from the rock matrix inside and outside. "After reading the article, I learned that this photograph wasn't just a computer simulation--it was a real, three-dimensional image of a skull, generated by computed tomography with the flesh electronically removed. I was dazzled. I thought, `If you could do this for living humans, maybe you could do it for a fossil.'"
Conroy and Vannier's teamwork is unusual in ways other than its unorthodox origins. It represents a union between the traditionally disparate disciplines of clinical science and social science. The latter ...
