The teeth found in Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Dorset are believed to belong to Maniraptor, a group of dinosaurs that includes Velociraptor. These dinosaurs evolved into many species during the Middle Jurassic, but knowledge of their origins is also lacking due to the paucity of fossils from this period.
Researchers at the Museum of Natural History and Birkbeck College used pioneering machine learning techniques to train a computer model to identify the mysterious tooth. This pushes the origins of some of the group’s members back almost 30 million years.
Dr. Simon Wills, a student at the Museum of Natural History who led the study, said, “Previous research suggested that maniraptorans lived in the Middle Jurassic, but the actual fossil evidence is patchy and controversial. This work, along with fossils found elsewhere, the group had already achieved global distribution by this time.”
“The teeth we analyzed contain the only troodontid and therizinosaur fossils ever recorded in the UK and are the oldest evidence in the world for these dinosaurs.”
Therizinosaurus was a large late Cretaceous herbivorous dinosaur known for its long claw-like pincers. The unique look of this extinct animal is now included in the latest Jurassic World movie.
Previous studies have attempted to classify isolated teeth based on various statistical techniques, but have not always been particularly successful. The researchers behind the current study are working to improve this, demonstrating that machine learning models can achieve high accuracy in identifying isolated teeth from known taxa.Research results published in a journal paleontology papers.
“The use of machine learning in vertebrate paleontology is still in its early stages, although its use is increasing,” adds Simon.
“The main drawback is that it requires a comprehensive training dataset for the model to learn.”
“For our research, we are fortunate that a relatively large dataset of dinosaur tooth measurements is already available that can be used to train the model.”
To convert the information contained in the fossils into data that can be used by machine learning models, researchers first had to create 3D models of each tooth from CT scans. This was because the teeth were too small to be practical to measure by hand.
We trained three different models using thousands of tooth measurements of known dinosaur species. Each model analyzes the data differently and combines their results to provide the most probable ID for each tooth.
Compared to other statistical methods, machine learning models yielded more accurate results, increasing researchers’ confidence in being able to classify unidentified teeth.
As technological innovation continues and various initiatives such as digitization projects make more information available to create training datasets, machine learning is becoming increasingly popular to investigate different problems in paleontology. It may become more generally applicable.
For more information:
Simon Wills et al. Machine learning confirms a new record of maniraptoran theropods in the microvertebrate fauna of Middle Jurassic Britain. paleontology papers (2023). DOI: 10.1002/spp2.1487
This story is reprinted courtesy of the Museum of Natural History.read the original story here
