Ancient Lizards Brought Back to Life as Robots

People have always had an inquisitive mind about the past, especially when it comes to those ancient times when Homo sapiens was still a long way from being the master of the Earth. Swiss and German scientists...

People have always had an inquisitive mind about the past, especially when it comes to those ancient times when Homo sapiens was still a long way from being the master of the Earth. Swiss and German scientists created a skeleton robot of Orobates pabsti, a lizard that lived on the Earth 300 million years ago, to help us learn more about what it fed on and how it moved.

Orobates pabsti was chosen for a good reason as this ancient reptile is the best studied representative of its era. The scientists managed to join the lizard’s multiple bones and fossilized footprints together to recreate the lizard’s features. It looks and walks as a hybrid of a salamander, iguana and alligator would. To «revive» the skeleton, the scientists used the OroBot robot.

It took efforts of many specialists — from paleontologists to programmers — to complete the task. When working on the project, the scientists precisely followed the information about this amazing animal obtained during the excavations. Nobody was disappointed in the result.