This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Researchers have created a detailed, animated 3D model of the imperial woodpecker (Campephilus imperialis), a spectacular bird that has not been confirmed in the wild since 1956. The model, built from a museum specimen and the only known film footage of the living bird, is freely available to scientists, educators and the public.
The study, led by Joshua Medina at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is published in the open-access journal Natural History Collections and Museomics. The research team also includes colleagues from the Moore Laboratory of Zoology at Occidental College in Los Angeles and Oregon State University. The imperial woodpecker was the largest woodpecker on record, reaching more than 60 centimeters (24 inches) in length.
It lived in the old-growth pine forests of Mexico's Sierra Madre Occidental and is presumed extinct following widespread logging of its habitat. Around 100 preserved specimens exist in museums worldwide, and the only moving images of the species are a few seconds of grainy film shot in 1956. "The imperial woodpecker hasn't been seen in the wild for nearly 70 years," said the research team.
"Creating a digital specimen let us recapture a glimpse of the bird's real likeness and behavior in a way that's easy to access and share." The reconstruction began with a female specimen held at the Moore Laboratory of Zoology, which houses the world's largest collection of Mexican birds. The team photographed the specimen 288 times from every angle and used photogrammetry, a technique that turns overlapping photographs into a 3D surface, to capture its shape with sub-millimeter accuracy. Measurements of the head, bill, body, wings and tail were taken throughout to keep the digital bird true to the original.
Feathers proved the greatest challenge. Because it is difficult to see individual feathers on a specimen, the team modeled individual feather shapes on those of the pileated woodpecker, the largest living woodpecker in North America, then resized and adjusted them to match the known proportions of the imperial woodpecker. Wing patterning was drawn from scientific illustrations and checked against the available visual record.
Using the open-source software Blender, the researchers then built a digital skeleton to drive the model's movement. Ten primary, 10 secondary and 12 tail feathers were each individually modeled and rigged, so that they can spread, bend and fold independently. To the team's knowledge, this makes the model one of the first open, specimen-based bird reconstructions to combine a photogrammetric body with individually animated feathers.
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