When Fossils Glow: How a CUHK Paleobiologist Is Revealing Dinosaurs in a New Light
When Fossils Glow: How a CUHK Paleobiologist Is Revealing Dinosaurs in a New Light
How a laser imaging technique pioneered in a Hong Kong laboratory is revealing feathers, flight and behavior hidden inside fossils — and rewriting the story of how dinosaurs took to the air.
What if a fossil’s most important feature is the one you cannot see?
For Professor Michael Pittman of the School of Life Sciences at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), that question has shaped a career. He studies fossils not as piles of old bones, but as records that may still hold clues to skin, feathers, movement and behavior — if you know how to look.
Under ordinary light, a fossil may look like little more than bones preserved in stone. Under a laser, hidden details can emerge.
Pittman's work has taken him from a Ph.D. on dinosaur tails to fieldwork in the deserts of Patagonia, museum collections in China and Europe, collaborations with National Geographic Explorers, and studies published in journals including PNAS and Nature Communications.
His interest began early. Growing up in Hong Kong, he visited fish markets and walked through the city’s country parks. “That kind of started me getting into biology,” he said. As a child, he played with dinosaur toys. Later, he studied dinosaur tails for his Ph.D. abroad. His career has since brought him back to the city where that fascination began — he now leads his research from CUHK.
The aim is simple to describe, even if the science is not: bring ancient animals back to life.
Making Fossils Glow
For much of the history of paleontology, scientists had to work mainly from bones. That left crucial questions open. How did dinosaurs move? Did they have feathers? How did their soft tissues shape their body?
Pittman helped develop laser-stimulated fluorescence, or LSF, a method introduced by his team in 2015. A laser makes different materials in a fossil glow in different ways. The resulting image can reveal a body outline, a feather edge or soft tissue hidden from ordinary light. Pittman describes the process as “putting dinosaur flesh back on the bones.”
The phrase is more than a slogan. LSF can turn a fossil from a static object into evidence of behavior.
Four Wings in the Air
One of Pittman’s clearest examples is Microraptor, a small, bird-like dinosaur with feathers on its arms and legs. Its four-winged body has long raised a basic question: how could all those wings have worked together?
Pittman and his collaborators used LSF to examine more than 100 specimens at China’s Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature. They used the images to estimate the animal’s body shape and wing profiles, then fed those details into computer models of airflow.
The result was not a picture of an animal flailing through the air. The forewings and hindwings worked together. Air moving around the front wings helped the rear wings generate lift. In the researchers’ models, the shape of the hindwings also helped Microraptor generate lift from the swirling air near their tips.
Computer-simulated airflow around the body of the bird-like dinosaur Microraptor shows that the forewings and hindwings worked together synergistically to improve gliding flight performance. Image credit: Hefler et al. 2026, PNAS.
Computer-simulated airflow around the body of the bird-like dinosaur Microraptor shows that the forewings and hindwings worked together synergistically to improve gliding flight performance. Image credit: Hefler et al. 2026, PNAS.
That finding changes the familiar story of flight. Microraptor was not simply a failed step on the way to modern birds. It was a capable glider, one of several feathered dinosaurs testing different ways to use the air. The path to bird flight was not a straight line. It was a series of experiments.
Four Wings in the Air
One of Pittman’s clearest examples is Microraptor, a small, bird-like dinosaur with feathers on its arms and legs. Its four-winged body has long raised a basic question: how could all those wings have worked together?
Pittman and his collaborators used LSF to examine more than 100 specimens at China’s Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature. They used the images to estimate the animal’s body shape and wing profiles, then fed those details into computer models of airflow.
The result was not a picture of an animal flailing through the air. The forewings and hindwings worked together. Air moving around the front wings helped the rear wings generate lift. In the researchers’ models, the shape of the hindwings also helped Microraptor generate lift from the swirling air near their tips.
Computer-simulated airflow around the body of the bird-like dinosaur Microraptor shows that the forewings and hindwings worked together synergistically to improve gliding flight performance. Image credit: Hefler et al. 2026, PNAS.
Computer-simulated airflow around the body of the bird-like dinosaur Microraptor shows that the forewings and hindwings worked together synergistically to improve gliding flight performance. Image credit: Hefler et al. 2026, PNAS.
That finding changes the familiar story of flight. Microraptor was not simply a failed step on the way to modern birds. It was a capable glider, one of several feathered dinosaurs testing different ways to use the air. The path to bird flight was not a straight line. It was a series of experiments.
Feet and Tracks
Pittman’s research brings together evidence from different parts of an animal’s body — and from different kinds of fossils.
In a collaboration with the University of New England, laser imaging revealed the scaly feet of early birds and bird-like dinosaurs. The feet offered clues to how these animals lived and how they moved away from older, ground-based ways of life. Laser images of Microraptor showed feet suited to a hawk-like lifestyle, suggesting some bird-like dinosaurs were accomplished flying predators.
The feet of the bird-like dinosaur Microraptor under ordinary light (upper) and under LSF (lower). Photo credit: Pittman et al. 2022, Nature Communications
The feet of the bird-like dinosaur Microraptor under ordinary light (upper) and under LSF (lower). Photo credit: Pittman et al. 2022, Nature Communications
Feet and Tracks
Pittman’s research brings together evidence from different parts of an animal’s body — and from different kinds of fossils.
In a collaboration with the University of New England, laser imaging revealed the scaly feet of early birds and bird-like dinosaurs. The feet offered clues to how these animals lived and how they moved away from older, ground-based ways of life. Laser images of Microraptor showed feet suited to a hawk-like lifestyle, suggesting some bird-like dinosaurs were accomplished flying predators.
The feet of the bird-like dinosaur Microraptor under ordinary light (upper) and under LSF (lower). Photo credit: Pittman et al. 2022, Nature Communications
The feet of the bird-like dinosaur Microraptor under ordinary light (upper) and under LSF (lower). Photo credit: Pittman et al. 2022, Nature Communications
Another study used no laser. It used footprints.
In South Korea, a trackway left by a sparrow-sized feathered dinosaur showed an unusually long stride. If the animal had used only its hind legs, it would have needed to run at about 10.5 meters per second — an implausible speed for such a small dinosaur. Pittman and his colleagues proposed that it was “flap-running”: beating its feathered arms to create extra lift and lengthen its stride. The dinosaur might have been taking off or landing, as the trackway captures a moment of movement. A skeleton can show what an animal was built like; footprints can show what it was doing.
Reinterpreted South Korean trackway made by a small bird-like dinosaur suggests wing-assisted 'flap-running' as the explanation behind the extremely wide spacing of the tiny, preserved footprints. Left image shows annotated fossil trackway (green), including a depth profile map of one of the two-toed footprints. Right image is an interpretative drawing of the trackway site. Image credit: Dececchi et al. 2024, PNAS.
Reinterpreted South Korean trackway made by a small bird-like dinosaur suggests wing-assisted 'flap-running' as the explanation behind the extremely wide spacing of the tiny, preserved footprints. Left image shows annotated fossil trackway (green), including a depth profile map of one of the two-toed footprints. Right image is an interpretative drawing of the trackway site. Image credit: Dececchi et al. 2024, PNAS.
A Predator Hiding in Plain Sight
The same instinct that drives the laser work — that familiar evidence can hold unfamiliar answers — also guides Pittman in the field.
Pittman’s fieldwork in Patagonia produced a different kind of surprise. Over two years, he and National Geographic Explorer Diego Pol explored the 69-million-year-old La Colonia Formation. They expected to find an abelisaurid, the southern-hemisphere group that included the famous horned Carnotaurus.
At first, the team thought they had found another Carnotaurus. But the more closely they studied the bones, the less that explanation fit. The animal was smaller and had no horns. It was a new species: Koleken inakayali.
Koleken inakayali. Image credit: Gabriel Díaz Yantén
Koleken inakayali. Image credit: Gabriel Díaz Yantén
The name carries two stories. Koleken refers to the claystone that entombed the animal. Inakayali honors Inakayal, a Tehuelche leader.
Koleken was about the size of a minibus and lived where a river met the sea. Its discovery showed that two large abelisaurid predators shared the same habitat near the end of the dinosaur era. It also raised a new question: how did these related hunters divide up the landscape?
That question links Pittman’s work. Old fossils and old fossil beds can still surprise us — if we return to them with new tools, fresh questions and a willingness to revise the first answer, as the team did when "another Carnotaurus" turned out to be a new species entirely.
Pittman’s team in Patagonia. Photo credit: María Agustinho
Pittman’s team in Patagonia. Photo credit: María Agustinho
A Predator Hiding in Plain Sight
The same instinct that drives the laser work — that familiar evidence can hold unfamiliar answers — also guides Pittman in the field.
Pittman’s fieldwork in Patagonia produced a different kind of surprise. Over two years, he and National Geographic Explorer Diego Pol explored the 69-million-year-old La Colonia Formation. They expected to find an abelisaurid, the southern-hemisphere group that included the famous horned Carnotaurus.
At first, the team thought they had found another Carnotaurus. But the more closely they studied the bones, the less that explanation fit. The animal was smaller and had no horns. It was a new species: Koleken inakayali.
Koleken inakayali. Image credit: Gabriel Díaz Yantén
Koleken inakayali. Image credit: Gabriel Díaz Yantén
The name carries two stories. Koleken refers to the claystone that entombed the animal. Inakayali honors Inakayal, a Tehuelche leader.
Koleken was about the size of a minibus and lived where a river met the sea. Its discovery showed that two large abelisaurid predators shared the same habitat near the end of the dinosaur era. It also raised a new question: how did these related hunters divide up the landscape?
That question links Pittman’s work. Old fossils and old fossil beds can still surprise us — if we return to them with new tools, fresh questions and a willingness to revise the first answer, as the team did when "another Carnotaurus" turned out to be a new species entirely.
Pittman’s team in Patagonia. Photo credit: María Agustinho
Pittman’s team in Patagonia. Photo credit: María Agustinho
The Next Hidden Story
Pittman is now extending this approach beyond dinosaurs, studying flight in pterosaurs, bats and dragonflies while continuing to develop LSF and other tools at CUHK. His work offers a lesson that reaches beyond paleobiology. Discovery does not always mean finding something new in the ground. Sometimes it means seeing something familiar in a new way.
A fossil is evidence of what died. With the right light, it can also show how life moved, adapted and learned to fly.
About The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)
- A bilingual and multicultural institution with a distinct commitment to combining tradition with modernity and bringing together China and the West
- Consistently ranked among the top in Hong Kong universities for total patent applications, patents granted and intellectual property licensing revenue over the past five years
- The only university in Hong Kong with a collegiate system that provides students with whole-person education, pastoral care and cross-disciplinary community life
- Associated with four Nobel Laureates, including Professor Sir Charles K. Kao, the "Father of Fiber Optics", who was a former Vice-Chancellor and President of the University
- The largest university campus in Hong Kong, abundant with greenery and serving as a hub for teaching, research and innovation
This content was paid for and created by The Chinese University of Hong Kong. The editorial staff of The Chronicle had no role in its preparation. Find out more about paid content.
This content was paid for and created by The Chinese University of Hong Kong. The editorial staff of The Chronicle had no role in its preparation. Find out more about paid content.
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