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4.1 Conservation of Palaeontological Heritage: Laser Cleaning Applications on Fossilised Bones ALEXANDRA ALEXANDROPOULOU, EFFROSYNI KARANTONI, NIKOLAOS-ALEKSIOS STEFANIS, a a a KRISTALIA MELESSANAKI, PARASKEVI POULI, GEORGIOS PANAGIARIS a b b a Technological Education Institute of Athens, Department of Conservation of Antiquities and Works of Art, Ag. Spyridonos str., Aigaleo, GR 12210, Greece b Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser IESL-FORTH, P.O. Box 1385, Heraklion, Crete, GR 71110, Greece Corresponding author email: alexandra27_6@hotmail.com Introduction aleontological material is the archive of nature that documents the geo-di- Pversity, biodiversity and cultural diversity of the universe. These specimens 1 illustrate a number of diverse conservation issues, cleaning being one of the most important and critical ones. This paper will discuss the series of cleaning tests that were undertaken in order to compare various methodologies. Speci- ied areas of the samples were cleaned with conventional cleaning techniques, 2 based on chemical and mechanical means, widely used in the ield of conserva- tion of paleontological materials and were compared to areas cleaned with two diferent laser ablation methodologies. This procedure was applied on samples 3 of fossilised bones from the entrance of a cave in Kato Zakros of Crete. 1 Landucci et al., ‘Laser Cleaning of Fossil Vertebrates’. 2 Lopez-Polin, ‘Possible Interferences of Some Conservation Treatments’. 3 López-Polin and Ollé, ‘Laser for Removing Remains of Carbonated Matrices from Pleistocene Fos- sils’. 207