Triceratops

While walking around the Mall in Washington, D.C. you are likely to see quite a few things. Some of them are unexpected. Here is a description of how this bronze cast head of a triceratops was created from a Smithsonian article entitled, "From a computer-generated model, sculptors cast a bronze triceratops that Looks like the real thing."

Equipped with the latest technology, experts set out two years ago to create a more perfect triceratops. The 1905 body was too large for its head, so scientists used a computer to produce a new skull 15 percent larger than the original. Using three-dimensional laser-scanning techniques unknown even five years ago, conservators also created an anatomically correct skeleton made of resin, plaster and fiberglass. The left shoulder blade, for instance, which had originally been sculpted by guesswork, was replaced with a mirror image of the right blade. The finished dinosaur, some 20 feet long and 8 feet tall, is what you see in the newly renovated Dinosaur Hall at Natural History. (A computer image can be viewed on-line here.) Triceratops’ original skull and a few other carefully preserved bones are also on display alongside the replica. Diceratops, the skeleton of a baby styracosaurus, centrosaurus and various dinosaur relatives are there too. 

But getting back to that big bronze head outside the museum, which was cast from the same computer-generated model as the skeleton inside: to make it, the Smithsonian chose sculptors at Millersville University, near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and sent them a rubber mold of the new skull, sectioned into eight pieces for transport. The sculptors reassembled the pieces, which averaged eight by six feet, and poured several layers of molten wax into the mold. Making a hollow wax head is complicated. Because the wax version of triceratops was produced from a laser-generated model, it lacked the exact markings of the original fossil. Artists spent more than a thousand hours sculpting in the details. “We used photographs and visited the museum to see the fossil firsthand,” says George Mummert, one of the three sculptors in residence at Millersville.

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/heads-up-51625718/#swasSXhcs08STTCo.99