Printing Dinosaur fossils

In February, Dr. Lacovara had announced that the Paleontology department at Drexel would team up with the Engineering department for what would largely be a novel new project: scanning all of the fossils in the University's collection (including some previously unidentified dinosaurs of Lacovara's own finds in other parts of the world) using a 3D scanner. The Engineering department would then take those scans and use a 3D printer to create 1/10 scale models of the most important bones. But, he reported, that wouldn't be the end of it: they intended, he said, to use those scale polymer "printouts" to model and then engineer fully working limbs, complete with musculature - to create, in effect, a fully accurate robotic dinosaur leg or arm, and eventually, a complete dinosaur. 3D printing is one of those technologies which has gotten a lot of press because it has an incredibly high cool factor, but which also hasn't yet seen much practical application. Dr. Lacovara, however, was positing that this technology could be incredibly useful for solving actual problems in paleontology which have plagued scientists since dinosaur fossils were first discovered. One of the main problems with dinosaurs, of course, has been the changing perceptions of how they stood, moved, and what they looked like. These questions have been unanswered and debated largely because of scale: dinosaur fossils are gigantic, and they weigh sometimes several tons, making simple tasks like fitting different pieces together nearly impossible. At a small scale with a high degree of accuracy, however, the problems of size and weight would no longer apply. The job of modelling the physiques of these often massive creatures would no longer be left to artists working in concert with scientists, but could be worked on by the scientists themselves. Paleontology, a science which has seen massive changes in commonly held beliefs over time as more complete fossils have been discovered, could move forward now using 3D printing technology.