29/10/2015
Our extinct predators brought to life for less | The Australian
THE AUSTRALIAN
Our extinct predators brought to life for less
JOHN ROSS THE AUSTRALIAN OCTOBER 26, 2015 12:00AM
Monash University's Justin Adams has 3D­printed scores of ancient animal fossils, including this sabre­toothed tiger’s skull. Picture:
Leanne Sultana. Source: Supplied
It was make or break for our ​
species when our forebears faced off with hyenas that could run like
cheetahs and bring down an elephant.
Now universities, museums and zoos around the world can print out replicas of our extinct enemies after
an Australian ​
researcher put their specifications online.
In a world first, Monash University palaeontologist Justin Adams has uploaded print­ready scans of
scores of fossils of the sabre­toothed cats, giant wart​
hogs, monkeys and other animals that coexisted with
our ancestors about 2½ million years ago. “This was a frightening time to be a human,” Dr Adams said.
“Yet we managed to survive.”
His work has focused on the Cradle of Humankind, an arc of limestone chambers near South Africa’s
Johannesburg, which became exposed at a crucial time in our evolution. The region has yielded about 40
per cent of the world’s fossils of early humans, and many more ancient animal remains.
In visits to Ditsong National Museum of Natural History in Pretoria, Dr Adams has scanned the entire
collection of fossil mammals and created 3D printed replicas. Now he has gone a step further, placing the
scans on an open access web page.
“It’s about as high­resolution as you can get short of going to a synchrotron,” he said.
The CT and microCT scans can occupy 10 gigabytes and take hours to download. But that is far quicker
and cheaper than taking a trip to South Africa — the only other way to study the fossils, many of them
the only of their kind in existence.
He hopes the gesture will reboot interest in the specimens, some dug up almost a century ago and largely
forgotten by science. It will also ease wear and tear on the fragile fossils after decades of handling.
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29/10/2015
Our extinct predators brought to life for less | The Australian
Dr Adams estimates the move will save researchers around $5000 per study in travel and accommodation
costs alone. “A lot of the same studies kind of get done over and over again,” he said. “That creates a
massive financial burden.”
He said animal fossils lacked the “sex factor” of their early human equivalents, making it harder for
researchers to raise money to study them. But these ancient monsters helped us acquire bigger brains and
the other improvements that characterised the homo genus. “We need that larger context to understand
why we evolved the way we did.”
The work has been outlined in the journal PLOS ONE (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?
id=10.1371/journal.pone.0139800) .
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health­science/our­extinct­predators­brought­to­life­for­less/story­e6frg8y6­1227581812543
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