Lorraine Butler
Cuenca (EFE).- Researchers at the Las Hoyas site in Cuenca have used artificial intelligence (AI) for the first time in the latest excavation campaign.
This technology will make it possible to better interpret and study the results extracted from this subtropical wetland from 125 million years ago, a benchmark worldwide.
In an interview with EFE, the co-director of the investigations, Jesús Marugán-Lobón, from the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM), explained that an international team of 25 people participated in the latest excavation campaign.
Among them researchers from the University of Warsaw (Poland) and Cambridge (United Kingdom), and, for the first time, the algorithms have been used to study and interpret the results.
A “frozen image” of Las Hoyas has been created
This, together with 3D methods, have made it possible to create a “frozen image”, like a kind of “time machine” of this Lower Cretaceous site, where “Spinolestes xenarthrosus” (popularly known as the “thorn thief”) was discovered. ), a paradigmatic fossil that evidenced the evolution of fur in mammals.
In this sense, Marugán-Lobón has highlighted that, after the tastings, they hope to have the first decisive results after this new campaign in Las Hoyas in October, and Artificial Intelligence will help to count and characterize each one of them.
However, he has highlighted the importance of the “numerical” and “photographic” results already obtained, since they had never been seen in this way, while acknowledging that this represents the “dream of every ecologist”.
Likewise, he has detailed that the new methods used will allow more details to be obtained at the biological level on account of the association of organisms and the fossilization process of this eight-hectare site located in La Cierva (Cuenca), and declared an Asset of Cultural Interest ( B.I.C.).
40 years of research in Las Hoyas
It has been almost four decades since the investigations began in Las Hoyas, recalled Marugán-Lobón.
In recent years, in addition to Artificial Intelligence, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) techniques and energy dispersive X-ray analysis of mineral composition have now been used at Las Hoyas, to which the opportunities offered by the drones.
In this sense, he explained that they have helped to obtain orthogonal photographs, which they now intend to interpret with Artificial Intelligence.
Thousands of fossils have been extracted from the Las Hoyas site, a worldwide benchmark for learning about the origin of animals and plants, and the most representative, around 25,000, are on display at the Castilla-La Mancha Museum of Paleontology (MUPA). ), in the city of Cuenca.
Some of these fossils have traveled to countries such as Japan in recent years, such as “Concavenator corcovatus”, known in colloquial language as “Pepito”, the “hunchbacked dinosaur of Cuenca”.
A museum space that has contributed to the dissemination of paleontology, and that draws from the Las Hoyas site, “with a unique potential yet to be exploited”, according to Marugán-Lobón, thanks to funding from the Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Junta of Communities of Castilla-La Mancha.
Paleontologists have been able to obtain complete images of this ecosystem for decades, in which plants, amphibians, reptiles, crocodiles, primitive birds and dinosaurs coexisted, which is exceptionally preserved by an extraordinary fossilization process.
The results of the work have been published in publications such as “Scientific Reports” or “National Geographic”, which dedicated its contents to this site in February 2023.