A new technique allowing virtual dissections of half-billion-year-old fossil embryos is producing the first three-dimensional images of the dawn of life. It reveals a universe of detail impossible using previous methods, and researchers said it was pushing back the frontiers of science much as the scanning electron microscope did half a century ago. [SNIP] In contrast to those methods, synchroton-radiation X-ray tomographic microscopy, or SRXTM, leaves the tiny fossils untouched but gives graphic details of their structure.