‘Never-ending project’: Ancient sea creature brought back to life through 3D technology

A team at the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre is reconstructing an ancient marine retile using 3D technology. Alex Karpa reports.

MORDEN, MAN. — Adolfo Cuetara and his team at the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre (CFDC) have undertaken a process unlike any other.

They are reconstructing and assembling a 30-foot, Styxosaurus species, a long-necked marine reptile that lived during the Cretaceous period roughly 80 million years ago.

And thanks to 3D technology, they are able to showcase what this marine reptile once looked like.

“The plan is to 3D scan all these remains, all the fossils, all the bones, the vertebrae, the flippers, the skull,” said Cuetara, who is the centre’s executive director.

Each stage requires hours of work.

This is how the process works: each fossil fragment is carefully scanned into a computer, digitally reconstructed, and then brought back to life using five different 3D printers. The pieces are assembled into a full skeleton for display.

It is the only institution in North America that manages the entire process in-house, from discovering and excavating fossils, to creating replicas and preparing models for display.

“The final replica has all the originals represented in the skeleton, plus the reconstruction with what we made,” he said. “The plan is to display those skeletons to our visitors.”

It’s a painstaking process. Cuetara said they sometimes only have 50-to-70 per cent of the whole skeleton, so reconstructing the missing parts takes a long time.

For example, he says the reconstruction of the Styxosaurus has taken around five months.

“That’s pretty impressive considering the amount of work that this is bringing,” he said. “We are working endlessly.”

Vast collection of marine reptile fossils

The CFDC is located in Morden, Man., about 100 km southwest of Winnipeg.

Millions of years ago, the land was once covered by a vast, shallow ocean called the Western Interior Seaway.

During the Cretaceous period, Manitoba’s inland sea was home to a remarkable variety of marine life, including mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, enormous turtles, hesperornises, and ancient octopus-like creatures.

The warm, shallow waters created ideal conditions for these species to thrive, offering an abundant food supply of plankton, ammonites, and fish.

But as water started receding, an abundant of marine fossils were preserved and left behind.

The centre now houses the largest collection of marine reptile fossils in the country, holding over 20,000 different pieces.

“We are kind of lucky that these have been exposed because of erosion,” said Gerry Peters, who is the field and lab technician at the centre. “They are right at the surface, and they are really cool animals to see.”

Gerry Peters, who is also known as the resident fossil hunter, says the process of reconstructing ancient creatures once took years, but new technology is dramatically speeding up the process.

“It’s really cool to see these old, dusty bones that I am finding in the ground take shape into what we are seeing here,” he said. “The technology, putting it together like this, is very exciting.”

New projects on the way

Cuetara said he and his team are already working on the next model.

Despite the meticulous and painstaking work, Cuetara says their project is essential, to help scientists and researchers better understand what life was like millions of years ago.

“This is going to be a never-ending project,” he said. “Because we have thousands of fossils, specimens in collection.”

Cuetara says he will continue assembling these skeletal models for as long as he can.

“We are not only studying the fossils, but we are studying the sediment of where the fossils are found,” he said. “That explains the culture, the crops and the farms we have today. It’s all collected.”

“We are going to move forward with this and protect the heritage this way,” he said.