3D-Printed Dinosaur Bones "Like Gutenberg's Printing Press" For Paleontologists 39
Philip Ross writes "Uses for 3D printers are more widespread than ever, but researchers in Germany are expanding 3D-printing territory even further. For the first time ever, scientists from the Department of Radiology at Charité Campus Mitte in Berlin have recreated dinosaur fossils from blueprints made by computed tomography, or CT, scans. The ability to scan and 3D-print dinosaur fossils could have wide-ranging applications for not only paleontologists but also educators and private collectors alike."
Re:Why Dig? (Score:4, Funny)
Seems like a no-brainer to me. Why go out and dig up fossils when you can just print up a dino-bone. Gap in the fossil record? No problem. Just print up the missing link using a 3d morphing tool and be famous.
... and if you do carbon dating of the petroleum products used to make the plastic bones, they're both the APPROXIMATELY the same age, right?
Perfect for a great april's fool joke (Score:3, Funny)
Print enough bones, take your DeLorean and plant them around the sites the first paleontologist would find ones. Then history would be rewritten and all would believe now that dinosaur were made of plastic, and thats how oil got made.