Mirasaura grauvogeli gen. et sp. nov., dataset of the skull of SMNS 97278 characterized using propagation phase contrast synchrotron X-ray micro computed tomography

Propagation phase contrast synchrotron X-ray micro computed tomography dataset of the skull of SMNS 97278, Mirasaura grauvogeli gen. et sp. nov. Holotype. SMNS 97278 (Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Stuttgart, Germany), an articulated skull and poorly preserved postcranium, including a largely complete crest. Locality and horizon. Lower unit (Grès à meules) of the Grès à Voltzia Formation (early Anisian, early Middle Triassic), Vosges mountains, eastern France. The tomographic acquisition was performed on the BM18 beamline of the ESRF. The skull block was imaged at an isotropic voxel size of 4.04 μm (2.02 μm configured with binning of factor 2). The beamline was configured with a filtered white beam setup to an energy of 125 keV with attenuator blocks of 5 mm sapphire, silicon dioxide bars of 30 mm, and 0.21 mm molybdenum with a 250 μm thick luAg scintillator. The sample to detector distance was 1.5 m, with acquisition done with a PCO edge 4,2 sCMOS, recording 6000 projections, and a total exposure time of 15 ms, with five accumulated images of 3 ms each. The skull was scanned with an offset of 800 pixels to increase final volume field of view. Two adjacent vertical series were perform to capture the complete skull. The final dataset in 16bits jpeg2000 was cropped as close as possible from the skull to reduce data size. In addition to the tomographic reconstruction, 3D mesh models of the specimens are provided, both in their in situ and in vivo configurations.