The colonial collection of dinosaur fossils, and associated archival documentation from Tendaguru (Tanzania) at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin is of outstanding importance both in palaeontological and historiographical terms. Along with investigating diverse 3D digitisation methodologies, our research engages with the emerging field of museum collection digitisation from a critical perspective. Current political and public debates on digitisation predominantly view it as a transformatory methodology that renders the museum collections accessible and part of a globally shared heritage. However, while digitisation indeed facilitates wider public access to museum collections, we question the promises of such framing, and highlight its limitations, as well as insist on the importance of critically engaging with the digitised content. Collections in Western museums carry within them layers of colonial narratives and biases. If left unaddressed during the process of digitisation, these colonial terminologies, biases, and violences are transported to the digital world with a wider access to the public than its physical counterpart. Therefore, we point out that while research on the best 2D and 3D digitisation practices is important to enable archiving and documentation of colonial collections, it is equally important to include perspectives that acknowledge the colonial past, and the present responsibilities into these digitisation approaches. We problematise how digitisation has come to be defined as an ultimate solution to inaccessibility and propose alternatively digitisation of colonial museum collections to be viewed as merely a first step in discussing the violent provenance of museum collections.