Counter-example -- a dinosaur skeleton where a significant amount of creative reconstruction goes into arranging the thing and posing it. This is a mix of art and science because you're using paleontological clues about gait etc combined with visual sense.
Is such preservation or reconstruction "an original work of authorship" (17 USC 102(a)), though?
Because it seems that many such interpretations (including the Neues Museum's, though that at least has a credible claim to not be strictly governed by US law) have less to do with copyright and original authorship, and more with the capacity for an empowered extant gatekeeper to continue gatekeeping under colour of law.
