Thank you for downloading from the BBC.

For details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use, go to BBCWorldServis.com slash podcasts. Hello. Morgan created with the use of a 3D bio printer will be

released. The revolution brewing in electronics is

unprecedented.

Dudley the duckman takes his first steps on a 3D printed leg after losing his own.

Go online, pick up any newspaper,

switch on a television.

It's hard to escape the explosion of 3D printing stories in the media.

Every day it seems the latest developments in 3D printing are thrust in front of our eyes and ears.

3D printing is reasonably old technology, if you bear in mind that things like Facebook are only about 10 years old.

3D printing was developed in the 1980s and it was originally called Rapid Prototyping.

I've seen some articles there where people were a little bit confused and thinking we were actually printing coral and it's not about printing coral it's about

printing a very natural-looking substrate that coral certainly can settle on.

I'm Howard Stableford and in this program I want to look at a specific aspect of 3D

printing to examine what its potential might be for conserving the natural world.

As 3D printing technology advances, the indications are that 3D printing could soon manufacture

any object from any material, including living cells.

With this technology, how close are we to 3D printing an extinct species one day?

I'd come across one form of 3D printing called stereolithography many years ago while presenting

tomorrow's world on BBC Television.

However, I had never seen a 3D printer in its modern accessible form, and I was surprised to find

there's a 3D printing shop close to me in Colorado in the USA.

...