3D printing looks set to become more and more affordable to the masses, and the idea of 3D printing struck paleontologist Kenneth Lacovara – why not use that technology to recreate dinosaurs? This is made possible by printing out dinosaur bones that are based on actual fossils. These will be scaled down, where it is in the same manner that document programs go about shrinking a page to 50% or a different percentage of its original size. A shrunken dinosaur skeleton would make it far easier to study in closer detail, an according to Lacovara, “It’s great because I physically can’t lift up (and piece together) the bones. It’s this new frontier in paleontology.”
Lasers are used to scan the original, fossilized bones, and these information will then be fed to a 3D printer where it will churn out copies of what it saw in the scan. This is made possible by laying down thin layers of plastic, and in due time, it will build the layers of the completed 3D bones. I suppose if this printer could churn out bone-like material, we could be on to something here.
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