At the Natural History Museum, extinct animals come back to life in augmented reality

The first to greet you is the traveler pie. The bird lands on a virtual branch below which, for a few minutes, we had started to tell you the story of the
great penguin, a cousin of the penguin that we know today (larger in size) but now extinct. “He couldn’t fly, so men would easily hunt him for meat and oil,” explains the voiceover in your augmented reality headset. The last couple was killed in 1844. “

The story of the traveling pie who comes to see you is no less sad. This migratory pigeon, which inhabited North America, used to gather in the millions to peck in the fields. A competition little appreciated by the men who massively hunted the bird. “There were several billion in the 19th century, we managed to eradicate them completely, regrets the naturalist Bruno David, president of the National Museum of Natural History (MNHN). We rewarded the best hunters, those who managed to kill up to 30,000 individuals per day. That gives the measure of the hunting we have done on this species. The last couple died in a zoo in 1914.

Become aware of the living heritage that we have lost

All the prowess of the Museum and SAOLA, an augmented creation studio with which he worked, is to have brought this extinct species back to life. Certainly in augmented reality. Of course, the time for a fifteen-minute experiment. But sufficiently impressive so that visitors can observe this animal of the past in an original way and become aware, as never before, of the living heritage that we have lost.

This is the essence of “Revive” project, which the Parisian museum will offer visitors from June 16, and for at least the next two or three years. It is not limited to the traveler pie. Very quickly the bird flies away and invites you to follow it through
the endangered and extinct species room of the great gallery of evolution, the flagship museum of the MNHN
at the Jardin des Plantes.In addition to this, you need to know more about it.

In this vast room, all along, the Museum exhibits 345 specimens representing 238 different species. For “Revivre”, eleven species were modalized in augmented reality and animated in their real size. Imagine the Steller’s Rhytin, this ancient marine mammal, cousin of
lament, deploy its eight meters long and eleven tons above your head. Or the
Thylacine (also nicknamed Tasmanian tiger), with its powerful jaw that it could open up to 120 ° (a record for a carnivore) and the
big saber-toothed tiger, whose canines measured up to 28 cm, walk among you.

The bird-elephant, the giant tortoise of Rodrigues, the dodo of Mauritius …

During your wanderings, you will also meet the‘bird-elephant, the giant tortoise of the island of Rodrigues,
the Dodo of Mauritius, the
Quagga, halfway between the zebra and the horse from southern Africa (only his head was streaked!) … Whether they took place 10,000 years ago or at the beginning of the last century, their stories have one common denominator: that of not having resisted for long their encounter with the ‘Man.

Steller’s Rhytine was hunted for its oil and meat until the last, in 1768. Rodrigues’ giant tortoises were captured by sailors who landed on the island to provide a valuable pantry for their travels. The Dodo did not survive hunting and new predators brought to its island by humans (rats, pets) either. The flightless beetle of Angola, which fed on elephant dung, which it made balls of, was considered extinct seventy years ago because of the local disappearance of the pachyderm, too hunted by humans.

But this beetle is the good news of these fifteen minutes of immersion. The beetle was recently rediscovered in remote areas of the Angolan savannah, long inaccessible due to armed conflicts. “An extremely rare event”, however, recalls the voice-over.

Two years of documentary research, seven months of modeling

The space-time journey ends as it began. With the traveling pie that sits in the palm of your hand. This is not the first time that a museum has incorporated augmented reality into its exhibitions. The Museum itself “installed, three years ago, a permanent virtual reality room plunging the visitor into the heart of evolution”, recalls Bruno David.

By bringing to life extinct species, “‘Revivre’ remains an original project, never proposed on this scale by a museum,” says Florent Gilard, co-founder of Saola. It took two years of documentary research. “We looked for sketches, testimonies and measurements of these species in the Museum’s libraries,” says Rémi Dupouy, reporter-naturalist at Salao. Then it took another seven months on the computer to model these specimens. With constant back and forth with Museum teams to ensure that there was no scientific error in the story thus created. “

Avoid the total immersive experience

If the experience is already absorbing, the Museum and Saola are hopeful of enriching it over time. By integrating new species, for example. But also by integrating the expected technological improvements. “For the flightless beetle of Angola, which is no more than seven centimeters, we went so far as to reproduce the striations, the movements of the antennae, the joints of each of the six legs, begins Rémi Dupouy. But, in the future, we should still be able to improve the fine details. “” The field of vision offered by the glasses is still quite limited, adds Florent Gilard. The next models should make it possible to widen it. “

Bruno David is however keen to avoid the total immersive experience. “The trip is done with augmented reality glasses and not a helmet,” he says. Thus, we stay in touch with the people around us. In other words, we can discuss, which seemed important to us for this experience. “