Digitizing Dinosaurs: Ethics and Technology in the 21st Century

Fossils are very useful tools for learning about our planet's past, but they often have a very intimate connection to our own history and are not usually made public, at least not in detail. The Late Jurassic Tendaguru dinosaur collection of the Museum für Naturkunde is a perfect example, as it contains very important information about German colonial practices in Tanzania in the early 20th century. To improve the accessibility and transparency of this collection and its colonial history, a multidisciplinary team is carrying out a project which, among other protocols, is digitising the dinosaur fossils in 3D.

I will present the workflows used in the 3D digitisation of the Tendaguru dinosaur collection, setting out best practices and recommendations that can be followed for the 3D digitisation of other natural history collections. These strategies not only preserve specimens as documents of palaeontological excavations under colonial conditions, but also broaden scientific awareness of the diverse perspectives surrounding these objects. The public is welcome to discuss and ask questions during the event, and if time is available, palaeontological research projects that can be carried out with these 3D models (such as 3D reconstructions of extinct animals and biomechanical simulations) will also be presented.