Fourteen Bambu Lab Printers Built a Nine-Meter Dinosaur Skeleton

Five nine-meter-long Megalosaurus skeletons are now roaming the grounds of Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. The installation, part of a new exhibition called Dinosaurs Are Forever, looks like a standard dinosaur show. The bones, though, have a notable origin story: fourteen Bambu Lab desktop printers spent seven weeks making them.

British artist Jay Jay Burridge designed the sculptures through his studio Future Fossils. Rather than carve the enormous skeletons by hand or rely on traditional fabrication, he turned to additive manufacturing. Gerard Shields of UK print service Printpool coordinated the production, running a farm of Bambu Lab machines continuously for just over seven weeks.

The team printed the bones in ABS-GF, an ABS filament reinforced with glass fiber. That choice matters for outdoor durability. After printing, parts moved to the Future Fossils workshop for finishing and assembly. The final sculptures combine 3D-printed bones with hand-carved sections, sitting on lightweight movable frames.

A dinosaur comes home

Megalosaurus holds a specific place in paleontology. Fossils found in Oxfordshire led geologist William Buckland to formally name it in 1824. It was the first dinosaur to receive a scientific name. The term dinosauria did not appear until 1842. Now, more than 200 years later, the animal has returned to Oxfordshire through 3D printing.

Burridge worked with Dr. Matt Dempsey, a musculoskeletal biologist and vertebrate paleontologist, to develop a new interpretation of the skeleton based on fossils and evidence from related species. The result is not a conventional museum mount. It is a redesigned creature that mixes science, art, and engineering.

It is perfectly logical that dinosaurs of the future should be 3D printed. We are taking creatures from 166 million years ago and rebuilding them with the technology of today.

Nadia Yaakoubi, Bambu Lab's head of PR and communications, noted the symmetry of the project. Blenheim Palace sits in the same county where the original Megalosaurus fossils were found. Dinosaurs Are Forever runs through November 1, 2026, and is included with a Park & Gardens ticket.