[Animals] Augmented reality brings back extinct ice age animals

[#Wittels-]

When scientists working with the La Brea Tar Pits wanted to bring extinct mammoths, ground sloths, and dire wolves to virtual life for museum visitors, they quickly ran into a problem: Accurate models of such creatures didn’t exist in the network of virtual worlds known as the “metaverse.”

So they went ahead and made their own. The researchers gathered detailed scientific information about nearly two dozen animals—from photos of mounted skeletons and videos of behavior in related modern-day species—and hired a development firm that creates models for video games. An artist then made virtual 3D skeletons from a mesh of virtual triangles, added fur and skin, and animated them. The team modeled 22 plants and animals excavated from the Tar Pits, including mammoths (Mammuthus columbi), saber-toothed cats (Smilodon fatalis), and mastodons (Mammut americanum).

 

Next, they created aa custom augmented reality app that visitors could use to see the creatures on the museum grounds. If visitors hold their phones up in front of the lawn near the museum entrance, for example, they can watch a young mammoth fall into a tar pit—and hear scientists explain how many animals met their end in the bubbly asphalt quagmire more than 10,000 years ago. The models are a bit pixelated (see video, above), but the lower resolution allows them to be viewed on all kinds of smartphones, including those with less processing power, the scientists report this week in Palaeontologia Electronica.

When the researchers tested a similar app, they found that museum visitors who used it did a better job of recalling the animals’ names and remembering their habitats, compared with visitors who only received printed materials. The researchers say this new type of “paeloart,” can help museumgoers successfully learn about the past. You can, too, with a version of the models available on Snapchat.

 

Link: https://www.science.org/content/article/augmented-reality-brings-back-extinct-ice-age-animals