Search the Community

I've always wondered what a crab concretion would look like when it was CT scanned and had the chance to do so recently thanks to the friendly people at Pacific Radiology here in New Zealand. The concretion contains a Tumidocarcinus giganteus crab from the Miocene of New Zealand. Here is the concretion I scanned, the legs were visible on the side so I knew a crab was inside: One of the slices of the crab after I loaded the DICOM images into 3D slicer. There were 203 slices. By segmenting the images, telling the program what is rock and what is not rock, you can create a 3D image for import into Blender or other 3D images to prepare it for 3D printing. The 3D mesh was made up of 770 142 triangles. After making it manifold (water-tight), I imported it into Cura to generate the GCODE for my 3D printer. It also adds supports to be able to print overhangs. Here is the 3D printed crab sitting outside the concretion. It is accurate in size. I also scanned a penguin concretion which is on my Sketchfab profile (https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/fossil-penguin-ct-scan-segmentation-take-2-dd9cb20684d4471dad2757ab8a53a548) Here is the video of the process: You can look at the 3D model on Sketchfab: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/ct-scan-of-fossil-crab-inside-concretion-25f26cb23a6046419521ed2422d5741d

Two years ago there was a discussion (started on January 27, 2022) on what looked like a fine Asialepidotus specimen, but which eventually turned out to be a jaw-dropping replica, series-produced by 3D printing based on a real museum item. At that time, the consensus here was that there was absolutely no way to identify the forgery based on photos alone (no matter how detailed), and indeed some Members resisted accepting the thruth until the forger himself was quoted explaining how it was made. Are things still at that point - I mean, it is impossible to discover a 3D print based on photos alone - or have we become cleverer? In pratical terms, what do you think of this one? It is being offered out of Taiwan, being described as "natural status".

I was invited to set up an educational booth at the Cranbrook Rock & Lapidary Club's Mineral, Fossil & Gem Show in October. It was a huge hit with the local collectors and members of the public. I was able to chat with a diversity of people ranging from families to fanatics and even some familiar faces from social media swung by to say hi. I am excited for the next event and will definitely be spending more time in Cranbrook. Such a welcoming community of fossil hunters and great number of Cambrian sites. Here are some photos of my table display. I wanted to spice things up and add fossils from around the world for this event as well as feature some of my current work.

Got to work on these guys because some of these creatures were my inspiration of what they would have looked like in color and others are at an art show. Wonder what animals will you like to see when its unleashed before your very eyes?

Hi, I 3D-printed another model, this time it's a life reconstruction of Passaloteuthis, a belemnite from the Jurassic. Several exceptionally preserved specimens have been found in southern Germany, on which I based this model. It is printed on an Anycubic Photon Mono X in white resin and painted using acrylics. The eye lenses are printed seperately from tranasparent resin and painted from the back before assembly. This will be my last 3D-print for the next time, unfortunately. Cheers, Thorsten

Aloha. here are two 3d printed models I showed before. The Turtle is selfmade, the Spino not so. I took the time to paint them and quite like the result. Pondered to give the Spino the reddish colour one often sees with fossils from kem kem, but decided rather to colour the "matrix", which is in fact a piece of treebark. Best regards, Jan