“…Abelson, 1954;Florkin, 1965;Westbroek et al, 1979;Eglinton and Logan, 1991;Engel et al, 1994;Schweitzer et al, 2007), which opened the door for palaeobiochemical investigations (Blumer, 1965;Albrecht and Ourisson, 1971;Niklas and Gensel, 1976;Weiner et al, 1976;Westbroek et al,26 D. Mietchen et al: Fossil MRI Saelen, 1989;Schweitzer et al, 2005;Dunca et al, 2008;Pruvost et al, 2007;Asara et al, 2007). While a number of techniques exist that can non-destructively image the surface of a specimen (see, e.g., Saelen, 1989;Scott and Collinson, 2003), serial grinding techniques combined with digital photography have long been the only method allowing to reconstruct the three-dimensional structure of fossils at a high spatial resolution (Luo and Eastman, 1995;Luo and Marsh, 1996;Sutton et al, 2001;Siveter et al, 2004;Sutton et al, 2005), yet they trade this achievement for a complete loss of the specimen.…”