Burke Museum Uses 3D Printing to Recreate Mammoth Skeleton

[Brian_Krassenstein]

As the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture begins construction on a new building expected to open in 2019, the staff decided that they wanted to display their Columbian Mammoth skeleton in the new exhibition hall. The only problem is that when the skeleton was discovered near Richland, Washington, only about 20% of its bones were found. Burke collections manager Meredith Rivin decided that 3D printing would allow them to recreate the missing parts much faster, and the replicated bones would end up being more accurate. The museum staff reached out to Steven Weidner, an affiliate instructor from the University of Washington's mechanical engineering department, for help, and he developed a multi-year 3D printing and 3D scanning project. UW engineering students and instructors will be working closely with museum staff to scan, digitize and ultimately 3D print all of the missing parts of the mammoth skeleton as part of an interdisciplinary class that will merge engineering and paleontology. You can read more at 3DPrint.com: https://3dprint.com/143361/mammoth-3...g-3d-printing/

[awerby]

Did they have a spare mammoth or two to work from? I don't see how they could have scanned bones that were missing from their specimen. Unfortunately the link to the full article doesn't work.

[curious aardvark]

bound to be other scanned mammoth bones around. plus you could always use elephant bones and just resize the file.

aritcle works now - brian tends to post the header in the forum BEFORE he makes the article live on the main website. I'm always clicking on things that aren't there - yet :-)

[awerby]

I don't think elephant bones are the same, and they're trying to build a mammoth, not a chimera. But yes, you can find scanned mammoth bones online, like this complete (composite) skeleton from the Smithsonian: http://3d.si.edu/tour/woolly-mammoth