The Pan-American Highway stretches from Alaska all the way down to Argentina.
More than 30,000 miles of roads, save for a brief break for the rainforest in southern Panama, flow along the western side of the Americas in a vast, twisting scribble through mountains, desert, jungle and plains.
It's only natural that a secret pops up along its path every once and a while.

Image: Wikimedia Commons
In 2010, construction workers in Chile uncovered a vast collection of whale fossils near the side of the highway. Locals quickly named the 300-yard field of bones Cerro Ballena ("Whale Hill" in Spanish). Exciting as the discovery was, road planners needed to build over the site to meet their deadline.
The following year, local paleontologists and 3D imaging experts from the Smithsonian Institution visited the site and 3D-scanned the bones. In just under a week, they digitally captured more than 10 marine vertebrates and 40 whales, some of which dated back 11 million years.
The bones have since been relocated to nearby Chilean museums, the road paved over.
All of the group's findings from the trip, however, from 3D models of the fossils to 360-degree tours of the site, are available online. Later this year, the Smithsonian team will 3D print a 26-foot whale fossil from the dig and display it in the Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
Digitizing the bones also allows the team to continue studying after they're removed. Without the 3D replicas, they barely would have had time to look at them.
The team says it's the next big step for paleontology: taking their findings beyond the paywalls of academic journals and straight to the online community. For anyone with a 3D printer, the museum will be theirs for the taking.

Video: YouTube, Smithsonian's Digitization Program Office

Nick Pyenson, Ph.D., a paleontologist at the Museum of Natural History, led the excavation to Cerro Ballena.

"We heard about this site when highway officials uncovered a few skeletons. Then nearly a year later in 2011, they were still uncovering more," he says. "But it wasn't going to stay uncovered forever. We knew we had to jump on this opportunity."

He enlisted the help of Adam Metallo and Vincent Rossi, nicknamed the "Laser Cowboys," from the relatively new Digitization Office Program at the Smithsonian Institution. Both men's jobs are to turn historic artifacts from the museum into 3D-printable downloads for school curriculums. Real fossils are obviously difficult to come by, but with this constantly growing archive, paleontology classes can print to-scale replicas from the museum for lectures and labs.

Given the tight deadline for researching the whale bones, Pyenson thought, digitization was the best way to ensure they got the most efficient results as quickly as possible.

The team was at the site for less than a week. Collectively, they took more than 22,000 images.

Metallo and Rossi used two scanners in conjunction with a 3D digitization software. The scanners, one handheld and one mounted via tripod, painted the fossils in red light, then converted the objects in real time to the software on the group's laptops.

"Scanning is all about taking measurements," Metallo says. "Based on what we see from around the object, we're picking up millions of coordinates and using the software to translate it and visualize it as a coherent image."

From there, the software turned the coordinates and loose images into polygon models, much like the characters you'd see in a Pixar movie. After some processing, the images were prepped for to-scale 3D printing.

"We're getting the accuracy and all the details of these fossil whales that are encased in rock. Usually, they wouldn't see the light of day for years, but now we can turn it into a public access piece and publish it online almost instantly," he says.

Below are three different rorqual whale fossils from the excavation:

Still, the biggest mystery going into the project was the placement of the fossils: What were all those whales doing there?

Turns out, they were killed by toxic algae near the shore, 5-11 million years ago, then washed up to the beach and were eventually buried by sand. The results of the study, which Pyenson and his colleagues published in a February 2014 edition of The Royal Society, wouldn't have been possible without the 3D scans, especially under the tight deadline of the road project.

He says he plans to continue utilizing the 3D digitization team for future research. The 3D printed whale, which will be up in the museum in the coming months, is only the start. He's recently hired an associate — "My own information scientist," he laughs — to continue building the website and ensure 3D downloads are both frequent and easily accessible.

Any data Pyeson and his team discover in the coming years is something he wants everyone to enjoy. Because the Internet. And because science.

"With museums, the protocol is always to research first, take years to publish findings, then eventually put an object on display," he says.

"Here, we've accelerated that process and made it much more transparent and quick. The more we can make the museum's walls invisible, the better. So stay tuned."

BONUS: The Secrets Hiding 1,000 Feet Under the Ocean

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Video: YouTube, Smithsonian's Digitization Program Office
Nick Pyenson, Ph.D., a paleontologist at the Museum of Natural History, led the excavation to Cerro Ballena.
"We heard about this site when highway officials uncovered a few skeletons. Then nearly a year later in 2011, they were still uncovering more," he says. "But it wasn't going to stay uncovered forever. We knew we had to jump on this opportunity."
He enlisted the help of Adam Metallo and Vincent Rossi, nicknamed the "Laser Cowboys," from the relatively new Digitization Office Program at the Smithsonian Institution. Both men's jobs are to turn historic artifacts from the museum into 3D-printable downloads for school curriculums. Real fossils are obviously difficult to come by, but with this constantly growing archive, paleontology classes can print to-scale replicas from the museum for lectures and labs.
Given the tight deadline for researching the whale bones, Pyenson thought, digitization was the best way to ensure they got the most efficient results as quickly as possible.
The team was at the site for less than a week. Collectively, they took more than 22,000 images.
Metallo and Rossi used two scanners in conjunction with a 3D digitization software. The scanners, one handheld and one mounted via tripod, painted the fossils in red light, then converted the objects in real time to the software on the group's laptops.
"Scanning is all about taking measurements," Metallo says. "Based on what we see from around the object, we're picking up millions of coordinates and using the software to translate it and visualize it as a coherent image."
From there, the software turned the coordinates and loose images into polygon models, much like the characters you'd see in a Pixar movie. After some processing, the images were prepped for to-scale 3D printing.
"We're getting the accuracy and all the details of these fossil whales that are encased in rock. Usually, they wouldn't see the light of day for years, but now we can turn it into a public access piece and publish it online almost instantly," he says.
Below are three different rorqual whale fossils from the excavation:



Still, the biggest mystery going into the project was the placement of the fossils: What were all those whales doing there?
Turns out, they were killed by toxic algae near the shore, 5-11 million years ago, then washed up to the beach and were eventually buried by sand. The results of the study, which Pyenson and his colleagues published in a February 2014 edition of The Royal Society, wouldn't have been possible without the 3D scans, especially under the tight deadline of the road project.
He says he plans to continue utilizing the 3D digitization team for future research. The 3D printed whale, which will be up in the museum in the coming months, is only the start. He's recently hired an associate — "My own information scientist," he laughs — to continue building the website and ensure 3D downloads are both frequent and easily accessible.
Any data Pyeson and his team discover in the coming years is something he wants everyone to enjoy. Because the Internet. And because science.
"With museums, the protocol is always to research first, take years to publish findings, then eventually put an object on display," he says.
"Here, we've accelerated that process and made it much more transparent and quick. The more we can make the museum's walls invisible, the better. So stay tuned."

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.