Archelon

Archelon is an extinct marine turtle from the Late Cretaceous, and is the largest turtle ever to have been documented, with the biggest specimen measuring 460 cm from head to tail, 400 cm from flipper to flipper, and 2,200 kg in weight.

The genus was named in 1895 by American palaeontologist George Reber Wieland based on a skeleton from South Dakota, who placed it into the extinct family Protostegidae.

The Archelon model is part of the exhibition “Once Upon a Sea”. Archelon is situated on the floor and thus very robust. Our digital sculptor Dmytro Teslenko sculpted this giant digitally. The head and flippers were 3D printed from SLA on a big scale printer. We reinforced the 3D print with fibreglass on the inside. The carapace was robot milled, and the surface was sculpted from Rasmonite. An inner steel structure ensured that the model could withstand climbing kids and adults.