Collin Moret, an assistant preparator, consults a field guide and “study skin” taxidermy mount while painting a sandpiper model.

Four sandpipers congregate on a workbench in the basement of Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History.

At first glance, the shorebirds look genuine — not unlike the hundreds of taxidermy specimens that populate in the Peabody’s Birds of Connecticut exhibit hall — but these sandpipers never hatched from eggs. They emerged, not quite fully formed, from a 3D printer.

Peabody preparators are using 3D scanning and printing technology to fill gaps in the bird hall’s display. They received an HP Sprout workstation through a grant from Blended Reality, a partnership between Yale and HP to provide faculty, students, and staff access to 3D design, augmented reality, digital imaging, and 3D printing/fabrication technologies.

Read the whole article here: https://news.yale.edu/2017/04/07/digital-birds-perch-yale-s-peabody-museum