Topic ID #13921 - posted 9/19/2011 7:16 AM
Jennifer Palmer
Webmaster
Anthropologists Use 3-D Printing Technology to Model Fossils
Jennifer Palmer
Webmaster
3-D Printing Gets Ahead: Anthropologists Use Printing Technology to Model Fossils
At Lehman College, 3-D printing creates fossil replicas, extra-large versions, reconstructions and even primate skulls that never entered the fossil record
By Sophie Bushwick | September 19, 2011
Animal corpses rarely defy the dictate of "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" to become fossils—and even if they do, they don't remain sturdy for long. By the time paleontologists get their hands on ancient remains, the fossils are incredibly fragile. So for decades, researchers have tended to do their close analyses with replicas instead. But in the past decade, 3-D printing has enabled a new solution: printing out copies of skulls and bones.
"My research is in the evolution of higher primates," says paleoanthropologist Eric Delson, who uses digital models and an Objet Eden260 printer housed at Lehman College in New York City to produce models of primates' skeletons. 3-D printing allows him to make accurate replicas without damaging the originals, and to generate larger versions of fossils and even reconstructions of lost bones. In fact, the digital models that 3-D printers use as templates make it possible to re-create the remains of long-lost ancestral primates, putting classical model-making methods to shame by printing calculated re-creations of bones that failed to form fossils.
Read more here.
At Lehman College, 3-D printing creates fossil replicas, extra-large versions, reconstructions and even primate skulls that never entered the fossil record
By Sophie Bushwick | September 19, 2011
Animal corpses rarely defy the dictate of "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" to become fossils—and even if they do, they don't remain sturdy for long. By the time paleontologists get their hands on ancient remains, the fossils are incredibly fragile. So for decades, researchers have tended to do their close analyses with replicas instead. But in the past decade, 3-D printing has enabled a new solution: printing out copies of skulls and bones.
"My research is in the evolution of higher primates," says paleoanthropologist Eric Delson, who uses digital models and an Objet Eden260 printer housed at Lehman College in New York City to produce models of primates' skeletons. 3-D printing allows him to make accurate replicas without damaging the originals, and to generate larger versions of fossils and even reconstructions of lost bones. In fact, the digital models that 3-D printers use as templates make it possible to re-create the remains of long-lost ancestral primates, putting classical model-making methods to shame by printing calculated re-creations of bones that failed to form fossils.
Read more here.
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