 For years and years vertebrate paleontologists have really been confined to working with the shapes, with the morphology of bones and with skeletons as you see behind me here. And our hypotheses about how these ancient animals lived and moved was based on how we could put those bones together in the physical world. And now for the first time in the history of paleontology we're able to move beyond those methods and into this virtual landscape where we can test our biomechanical hypotheses in rigorous ways that were never possible before. My first foray into 3D scanning was actually working with a Drexel student in our College of Media Art and Design. And he wanted to do a master's thesis that was steeped in both science and digital art. And so we used an early generation of scanner to scan a 65 million year old crocodile and he put it back together, put the muscles and the tendons on, taught it to walk, taught it to swim and to hunt and that was his master's thesis. And that master's thesis actually he took it into his interview with DreamWorks and he's a DreamWorks animator now. We scan the fossil, we clean it up a little and then we translate that into an STL file. You can take the STL file, put it in another laptop connected to a 3D printer, essentially set a few parameters, push a button and 10 or 12 hours later, kind of like the replicator in Star Trek, out pops the object. Scanners like this have gotten better in recent years, more portable and much less expensive. In the past if you wanted to create a 1 tenth scale copy of a dinosaur bone, it was strictly in the realm of art. So you had to get an artist to look at the bone, to draw it and then to sculpt a 1 tenth scale piece and then to mold that and then to make a cast from the mold. And so it was an arduous process and it didn't necessarily have the kind of fidelity that you want in science. And so scaling specimens was a huge deal. In most cases cost prohibitive in the past. Now it's very easy to get a 1 tenth scale copy of a dinosaur with this 3D scanning and printing technology. It's really important and it's really a positive development that a high tech instrumentation like this is getting down to affordable prices because not all areas of science are funded equally well. These kinds of scanning systems now like the next engine scanner, base price is about $3,000 that plugs into any laptop. But for a modest price anybody can get into this field and it's to the point where you can have one of these in your house if you're interested in scanning civil war artifacts or whatever it is that interests you. Being a paleontologist I work with scientists in a lot of developing countries and now cutting edge technology is becoming accessible to them as it proliferates. There's a move with intellectual property today to make things open source, to open access, to democratize it. Science has always been that way. Science can't be any other way. If other scientists don't have access to my original data where they can reanalyze it in their way, reexamine my hypotheses and potentially falsify my hypotheses, it's not science. There's no way to keep science data locked up. This digital technology is really just a way to amplify the best and essential aspect of science which is that it's essentially open source. Now instead of a paleontologist having to fly from Spain to New Jersey to look at the sea turtle and to tell me how wrong I am, I can send him the file and he can correct me that way. In science we never really say that we prove anything. The best you can do in science is to fail to falsify your hypothesis and you're not going to do that if the data isn't open source.
 For
 years and years vertebrate paleontologists have really been confined to working with
 the shapes, with the morphology of bones and with skeletons as you see behind me here.
 And our hypotheses about how these ancient animals lived and moved was based on how we
 could put those bones together in the physical world.
 And now for the first time in the history of paleontology we're able to move beyond
 those methods and into this virtual landscape where we can test our biomechanical hypotheses
 in rigorous ways that were never possible before.
 My first foray into 3D scanning was actually working with a Drexel student in our College
 of Media Art and Design.
 And he wanted to do a master's thesis that was steeped in both science and digital art.
 And so we used an early generation of scanner to scan a 65 million year old crocodile and
 he put it back together, put the muscles and the tendons on, taught it to walk, taught
 it to swim and to hunt and that was his master's thesis.
 And that master's thesis actually he took it into his interview with DreamWorks and
 he's a DreamWorks animator now.
 We scan the fossil, we clean it up a little and then we translate that into an STL file.
 You can take the STL file, put it in another laptop connected to a 3D printer, essentially
 set a few parameters, push a button and 10 or 12 hours later, kind of like the replicator
 in Star Trek, out pops the object.
 Scanners like this have gotten better in recent years, more portable and much less expensive.
 In the past if you wanted to create a 1 tenth scale copy of a dinosaur bone, it was strictly
 in the realm of art.
 So you had to get an artist to look at the bone, to draw it and then to sculpt a 1 tenth
 scale piece and then to mold that and then to make a cast from the mold.
 And so it was an arduous process and it didn't necessarily have the kind of fidelity that
 you want in science.
 And so scaling specimens was a huge deal.
 In most cases cost prohibitive in the past.
 Now it's very easy to get a 1 tenth scale copy of a dinosaur with this 3D scanning and
 printing technology.
 It's really important and it's really a positive development that a high tech instrumentation
 like this is getting down to affordable prices because not all areas of science are funded
 equally well.
 These kinds of scanning systems now like the next engine scanner, base price is about $3,000
 that plugs into any laptop.
 But for a modest price anybody can get into this field and it's to the point where you
 can have one of these in your house if you're interested in scanning civil war artifacts
 or whatever it is that interests you.
 Being a paleontologist I work with scientists in a lot of developing countries and now cutting
 edge technology is becoming accessible to them as it proliferates.
 There's a move with intellectual property today to make things open source, to open
 access, to democratize it.
 Science has always been that way.
 Science can't be any other way.
 If other scientists don't have access to my original data where they can reanalyze it
 in their way, reexamine my hypotheses and potentially falsify my hypotheses, it's not
 science.
 There's no way to keep science data locked up.
 This digital technology is really just a way to amplify the best and essential aspect of
 science which is that it's essentially open source.
 Now instead of a paleontologist having to fly from Spain to New Jersey to look at the
 sea turtle and to tell me how wrong I am, I can send him the file and he can correct
 me that way.
 In science we never really say that we prove anything.
 The best you can do in science is to fail to falsify your hypothesis and you're not
 going to do that if the data isn't open source.