13 hours ago
E-book allows replicas to be 3-D printed
Forget your yellow rubber ducky — what about a plesiosaur to play with in the bathtub?
Fossilised bones from the prehistoric marine reptile are on display at the University of Otago's geology department and are among 50 fossils highlighted in a newly released e-book titled Fossil Treasures of the Geology Museum.
Many of the fossils in the online book have logos that say "print ready", which means readers can click on it and print their own 3-D replica of the fossil.
The book is the brainchild of University of Otago geology emeritus professor Daphne Lee, Geology Museum fossil collections archivist Dr Jeffrey Robinson, and University of Auckland School of Biological Sciences honorary academic and University of Otago visiting academic Dr Daniel Thomas.
Dr Thomas said the e-book, released last week, brought to life the stories of a selection of the 60,000 fossil vertebrate, invertebrate and plant specimens held in the Geology Museum.
Collected over 150 years of paleontology research at Otago, the fossils are used for research, teaching and outreach, and collectively represented the past 500 million years of Earth's evolutionary history, he said.
Fossil Treasures of the Geology Museum tells the tale of around 50 of the specimens in the geology museum.
"We have a range of materials like giant plesiosaurs; we have mega-sharks through to tiny little beetles, — so there's a huge diversity.
"These are from locations including Foulden Maar, and much of our material is from Southland in particular, but also North Otago, South Canterbury and beyond.
"So it has a strong southern, South Island focus."
He said the 3-D models spanned the past 500 million years, which gave insight into the range of fossils at the museum.
"Just as much as we have biological diversity represented in the book, we've actually got time diversity as well."
Dr Thomas said the e-book was released last week and was free to access.
It would be particularly useful for schools to use.
"Our target age is 13-14 and slightly younger.
"We actually have a couple of NCEA assessment standards that we had in mind while writing this.
"Because this is an e-book, we have infinite capacity to make improvements, so what we really want is to hear back from people, especially teachers, who may be thinking, 'I could use this, but it's not quite there'.
"We would really welcome those conversations so we can make improvements, to make this as useful and accessible as possible."
He said the trio would continue to add to the resource in the future.
"Certainly, those readers who are familiar with the collections will straight away see that there's a lot of material from the museum that's not currently in the e-book, especially plant material.
"And, so, these are all chapters that are actually in the works right now, and this will just be added to over time."
