3D printing Sophie the Stegosaurus
posted 08 March 2015 at 22:29:28
Last year, London’s Natural History Museum acquired the
world’s most complete example of a Stegosaurus. Nicknamed Sophie, the 2.9m skeleton now occupies pride of place in the Museum’s Earth Hall. The museum has now commissioned specialist
3D printing company Voxeljet’s modelling subsidiary Propshop to laser-scan and
create a 3D digital template of the dino. By investigating 3D prints of
specific pieces – the skull, radial plates and tail bones – researchers will try
to get to the bottom of questions that have long baffled paleontologists, such
as what the radial plates were used for and how such an enormous creature moved
and survived.