Scratching the surface? The use of surface scanning in physical and paleoanthropology

As virtual anthropology is becoming more and more ubiquitous, so are the means to acquire, process and analyze 3D data. Among these means, surface scanners have gained a prominent place for a variety of reasons that make them useful to anthropologists. While surface scanning has several advantages over other 3D devices (digitizers, volume scanners etc.), it does come with one obvious drawback - internal structures remain invisible. Still, surface scanning is emerging as a convenient tool for anthropometric and especially paleoanthropological research. It extends our ability to quantify phenotypic variation, its non-destructive nature contributes to specimen conservation, and it can become an integral part of virtual anthropology, thus doing more than just "scratching the surface".