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"Al-Ahli was a key trauma hospital north of Wadi Gaza. It is the hospital with the only functional CT scanner north of Wadi Gaza," he said, referring to the valley that effectively divides the territory in two because it is an Israeli-designated "no-go" area.

Specimens that are too large for fluid preservation are also unlikely to fit into a CT scanner, but researchers were reluctant to leave these out.

Fossils from this era, called the Middle Jurassic, are extremely rare, says Dr Liz Martin-Silverstone at the University of Bristol who used a CT scanner to make a 3D digital model of the fossil.

“We measured the whole vertebral skeleton of a living great white shark with a CT scanner and compared that to the previous reconstruction of the Megalodon vertebral column,” Sternes said.

There’s a defibrillator and a portable ultrasound on the I.S.S., but no CT scanner or M.R.I. machine.