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Over the past few years, I have been collecting(purchasing) various bones of the giant armadillo, Holmesina septentrionalis from the internet. My goal is to eventually build an entire skeleton. Since I live in Colorado, purchasing bones is my only choice. Recently I purchased a left astragalus bone and decided to try and create a right astragalus with my 3d printer. Using my iPhone, I took about 50 pictures of the bone at various angles against a white background. Using Agisoft Metashape and Meshmixer software, I was able to create a 3d image of the bone. This took some trial and error. YouTube instructional videos were very helpful. The 3d image was then loaded into Cura software and printed on my Ender 3 Pro printer. See image of the final painted bone. On the left is the original bone, on the right is the new 3D printed bone.

So recently my father bought a 3D printer and we've been experimenting printing some cool fossils for a while now. It's a really cool technology. Though it can take a while to print a piece the results are really quite cool. A life size Archaeopteryx can take a few days to print if you don't keep printing during the night. Finishing up the prints afterwards can also take a bit of time. Cleaning off all the supports and sanding down rough surfaces can be quite the process. Then there's painting depending on the desired result of course. There are actually a lot of nice things that can be found for download on the internet. Though many of these models still require a bit of digital cleanup before they could be printed. So here are a number of the painted, unpainted and half painted results. Most of the printed stuff is dinosaur. Photo of the 3D printer and the just finished print of a juvenile Edmontosaurus lower jaw. And here's the same Edmontosaurus jaw print half painted again with the real fossil in mirror image next to it. I scanned the original bone that I then mirrored digitaly so that I could print out the other side of the jaw. Allosaurus hand claw. Clidastes Mosasaur quadrate bone. Skull of the "Prosauropod" Massospondylus. Holotype right lower jaw of Owenodon hoggi, an Iguanodontid. Download link: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/iguanodon-jawbone-f016ad38ebb647988dafd6bbdc1510d0 1/5th scale Nanotyrannus lancensis skull. The Cleveland specimen. Download link for original file: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/nanotyrannus-lancensis-young-t-rex-7b0967fa27674d959647868686b6717b One of my favourites. The Eichstatt Archaeopteryx specimen. Download link for original file: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/eichstatt-archaeopteryx-b71872ad42794ef7883021f2fa9a8079 The right side skeleton of the baby Parasaurolophus "Joe". Printed at 1/5th scale. Right humerus and pedal phalanges printed at life size. Most of the fossil prints are for my collection. But my dad also wanted a few cool things which I painted for him. Skulls of Dodo and Australopithecus Taung Child. Download link for Dodo original file: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/dodo-264b7746a42b41b2845a499de16f8538 Most are painted roughly to look like their real counter parts.