Ancient Mollusk Recreated

Recently a 390 million year old mollusk was recreated using digital scanning and 3D printing at the university of Texas at Austin.  Until now, only fragments of fossils have been found of this rare and ancient mollusk, this has made reconstruction nearly impossible. But using the most complete specimen found to date they have built an accurate representation of what this creature would have looked like crawling on the sea floor millions of years ago.  Protobalanus spinicoranatus was resembled from fragments using something similar to a CT scanner, which is a fairly new technique, and then recreated using a 3D printer.  Instead of making a life size model the researchers made their's 12 times larger than the real spinicorantus, which is only one inch in length.  The tough plating and sharp spines on the mollusk give clues to the dangerous environment it lived in so many millennia ago.  This study is a great example of using modern technologies to better understand ancient wonders from the ocean.

http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/593/cache/ancient-mollusk-found-recreated-3d-printer_59370_990x742.jpg

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/09/120918-ancient-mollusk-reconstruction-3d-animals/