Cutting it open to remove and examine the fragments would destroy the geometric relationship between the fragments and the rib wall — the relationship that was itself part of the evidence.

You would know the chemical composition of the fragments, but you would lose the spatial data that described how they had entered the bone and at what angle.

The solution was to look inside without cutting: to use X-ray-based imaging to visualize the internal structure of the rib and the fragments without physically disturbing either one.

This is what high-resolution CT scanning makes possible, and by the time the Waters team began their modern study of the Manis site, CT scanning technology had advanced far beyond the clinical scanners used in medical diagnosis.

Industrial CT scanners — designed for non-destructive testing of manufactured parts, the inspection of archaeological specimens, and similar applications — could produce resolutions of tens or hundreds of micrometers: fine enough to image individual bone trabeculae, the microscopic lattice of tiny struts that forms the interior scaffolding of mammal bone.