At the American Museum of Natural History ’s two - week summer camp Capturing Dinosaurs : remodel Extinct Species Through Digital Fabrication , a group of teenager learned the processes and tools used by fossilist for study dinosaur pearl and digitally retrace them . And we fuck off to dog along for some of it .
It all begins in the cryptic underbelly of the museum , where campers are consecrate access to an entire library collection of dinosaur bones to analyse .
Before attendees take up read their fossils , the museum shows them how factual palaeontologist clean bones and scan them with million - dollar machines .

The most noteworthy part of the bivouac is that the kids scan , model , and rebuild these dinosaurs with no previous experience in the 3D printing field . Using123D Catch , a peregrine app on phones supplied to them , each individual radical of kids are reach a set of castanets without any description , and are asked to scan them and then find out what dower of the body of which dinosaur they have .
In a contain and safe environment camping bus get hands on with about 50 different bones that have never been scanned before , which they study and scan into the estimator . The fossil are n’t needs in great form , though , so the next footfall is to remodel the digital version into something that comfortably come close how the pearl originally look . Once it ’s shipshape , it ’s connected together with the other refurbished bones to form a complete digital simulation . Tinkercad and Makerware are used to prep the consequence for printing .
After the pearl are printed out , motor home identify which the dinosaur they ’re from ( Allosaurus , in this type ) , figure out where each os goes , and then put the pieces together with a little hot glue . As Barry Joseph , the camp advisor , explains , “ They go from studying the strong-arm bones to the digital ones and then back to the three-D - impress physical . ”

The Kyd are n’t doing exactly what actual - life scientists in the field , of course , but they emphatically get over parts of it . While there ’s rarely a reason to 3D - print pearl outside of for public education , scientist digitize clappers for subject area in the bailiwick all the metre .
The end result ? A 3-D - printed dino they can call their own . I ’d like to see them try and do that atCamp North Star .
Photos Courtesy of © AMNH / R. Mickens / D. Finnin / Nick Stango

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