And here he is, Dirk the Triceratops!
After months of scanning, 3D printing, mounting original bones and 3D prints, Dirk is proudly on display at the dinosaur gallery of Naturalis.
Naturalis Biodiversity Center, located in Leiden the Netherlands, is the national research institute for biodiversity and responsible for one of the biggest natural history collections in the world, counting over 42 million different objects. This includes a 66 million year old T. rex skeleton which was discovered in 2013 in Montana US, and other dinosaurs such as a Triceratops nicknamed Dirk. After a construction period of 2 years, Naturalis has opened the doors to a completely new museum.
The skeleton of Dirk was dug up near Newcastle, Wyoming, US. The animal lived about 67 million years ago. When working on the skeleton it became clear that some bones were missing, including a number of ribs, one of the horns and a large part of the skull. Naturalis wanted to reconstruct the skeleton of Dirk to put on display it in their newly opened museum. With modern technology such as 3D scanning and large scale 3D printing, they were able to complete the skeleton of Dirk.