Editorial: Evolving Virtual and Computational Paleontology

During the last few decades, the development of new technologies and methods, and increases in computational power, are widening Paleontology’s research frontiers, moving this discipline—situated halfway between Biology and Geology—toward increasing use of (paleo) biological and (paleo)ecological approaches, and providing the opportunity to fully explore quantitative aspects of phenotypic evolution as well as new clues to the history of life. The everincreasing availability of 3D models obtained by CT, surface scanning (SC) and/or photogrammetry (PT) is increasing the visibility and accessibility of rare, difficult to handle, remains, and therefore the number of virtual fossil representations that feature in scientific papers, contributing to this “revolution” and leading to the dawn of the “Virtual and Computational Paleontology” era. The pioneering steps toward this new era were taken in the early 1980s, when Tate and Cann (1982) and Conroy and Vannier (1984) became the first research teams to apply CT to Vertebrate Paleontology. Almost two decades later, the first applications of SC and PT to Vertebrate Paleontology opened the door to many new ideas and approaches (Lyons et al., 2000; Breithaupt and Matthews, 2001). Since the beginning of this digital paleontological era, the number of scientists merging traditional techniques with virtualization and computational advances has greatly increased, a process that still continues (and the first comprehensive reviews were published a few years later see Zollikofer and Ponce de Leon, 2005; Cardini and Loy, 2013; Sutton et al., 2014). Virtual (digital) representations have a great variety of non-invasive applications, including but not limited to digital curation (based on 3D models libraries), virtual restoration of specimens, and anatomical studies of both external and internal morphological structures, and open up the opportunities for development of new analytical tools. Thanks to virtualization, many Computational analyses and techniques (including geometric morphometrics, finite element analysis, multibody dynamic analysis, computational fluid dynamics, machine-learning, etc.) have been widely applied in Vertebrate Paleontology. Furthermore, their use is currently rapidly increasing thanks to continuing efforts to create more and better 3D virtual models, which are the basis for new computational approaches. Despite these many benefits, Virtual and Computational Paleontology is still not prevalent as it might be. Virtual data are therefore not broadly shared and new methodologies and techniques usually do not easily reach the widest audience, in particular younger researchers who usually show an insatiable hunger for learning and acquiring new skills. This Research Topic was conceived with the principal goal of spreading this technological knowledge and, by taking advantage of the Open Access format of Frontiers, was intended to reach the widest possible number of researchers. The volume includes 15 different papers on the use and analysis of virtual representations and new computational methods, applied to several vertebrate taxa. Edited and reviewed by: Corwin Sullivan, University of Alberta, Canada