Members of the Additive Design and Manufacturing Systems Lab (ADaMS) in Mechanical Engineering are collaborating with paleontologists at the University of Alberta to study a 76 million year old fossil of centrosaurus apertus located in the Paleontology Museum in the Earth Sciences Building at the University of Alberta.
Paleontologists of the U of A reached out to Dr. Ahmed Qureshi, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and the Director of the ADaMS Laboratory in January 2018 to see if his team could assist them to analyse some of the fossils in the U of A's collection. The team began a few weeks later with a test scan on a styracosaurus fossil. The paleontologists were so pleased with the scan and the analysis that the collaboration has expanded.
Baltej Rupal, a PhD candidate working with Dr. Qureshi in the ADaMS lab, performed this recent scan and analysis of a centrosaurus apertus skull.
Rupal's research uses experimental and simulation techniques to predict deviations in 3D printed parts.
"As an engineer, I didn't really know much about paleontology," say Rupal. "So I was really excited and curious about this project."
Working with delicate fossils that are difficult to move has proven a challenge for Rupal who is used to working with 3D printed products that you can pick up and adjust depending on what you need.
"The fossils are delicate and the geometry is freeform. It's hard to conduct the scan when you can't change the position of the sample," he explains.
The ADaMS is providing the paleontology group with 3D laser scans and finite element analysis. The paleontologists will use the scans and analyses to learn more about the fossil, which will give them information about the animal when it was alive as well as how best to preserve the fossil at the university. Amongst the possibilities for preserving the fossils are custom jackets that the ADaMS lab could 3D print.
Each partner in the collaboration has learned a lot about the contributions the other makes to science and society.
"I have learned that paleontology has a tremendous impact on society," says Rupal. "It is frequently the science that gets young children interested in science."
Would Rupal turn in his 3D scanner and printer for the life of a paleontologist?
"It's appealing because they enjoy a lot of field trips to remote sites," he says. "But I don't think I have the patience it takes to spend the years it may take to excavate a fossil."
"With collaborations like these, we get the best of both worlds," he concludes.