14 DAY TRIAL // Whales are huge things, and they're mostly protected by law, poaching aside. That doesn't really mean anything to archaeologists, especially with how rare whale fossils are. The Smithsonian has the solution though.
Basically, The National Museum of Natural History has decided that, if it can't have a real whale fossil, it may as well exhibit the semblance of one.
So it has put on show a 3D printed replica of a prehistoric fossil of a whale found in the Chilean desert.
20 feet in length (6 meters or so), the not really an actual whale fossil represents the largest whale skeleton section found in recent years.
And since there was no way to take the real thing from the museums in the Chilean cities of Caldera and Santiago, 3D printing tech had to come in.
Good thing the technique is far enough along that the replicas can look just as good and “lifelike” (insofar as something dead for millions of years can look lifelike) as the originals.
The Smithsonian collaborated with 3D Systems on the making of the 3D printed pieces. The whale bits are only part of The Smithsonian 3D exhibition. The website we linked to shows the models of everything that has so far been scanned and rebuilt from whatever substance.