Treasure of the month in October: the common toad in CT scan
6 October 2017
Photo: UHH/CeNak, Karolin Engelkes
Skeleton and pectoral muscle of a common toad, visualization based on a CT scan.
The Treasure of the Month this October is a digital representation of a Common Toad, Bufo bufo. It is brought to you by the cooperation with the Hamburg based company, YXLON International GmbH using their YXLON FF35 CT imaging system.
This toad specimen, native to Europe and many other parts of the world, was found in Denmark in 1968 and it is now housed at the CeNak institute in the herpetological collections, along with several hundred other Bufo bufo specimens, at various stages from egg to adult and from different localities.
The specimen was first scanned with the CT system, then stained with iodine and scanned again. This provided visualizations of both the hard tissue, such as bone and cartilage, as well as the stained soft tissues such as muscle and organ. These scans were compiled to create holistic 3D views of the animal. We then carried out a series of analyses and examined the shoulder girdle. The results of these tests were compared across different frog and toad species to help answer some questions about the toad’s evolution and the individual function of the shoulder elements.
The herpetological collection housed at CeNak is the fifth largest collection of amphibians and reptiles in Germany. The institute is home to more than 65,000 specimens of which about 70% are reptile and the other 30% amphibian. Most of the samples have been preserved in alcohol but there are also hundreds of dry samples including skeletons, histological sections, and skins.