Sculpting and 3D printing Devonian shark teeth

[ThePhysicist]

I recently got started sculpting digitally, and with this new hammer I am now excitedly looking for nails! My thoughts turned to some of my microfossils, specifically some of my really old shark teeth. Microfossils in general are difficult to appreciate without a microscope, so I figured it would be fun to sculpt a few. My first subject is a Devonian Phoebodont shark tooth that I thought looked neat enough. Besides being some of the oldest teeth I know of (380-390 Ma), they look very different from the teeth of modern sharks (except for those of the frilled shark).

 

 

Most of the teeth are broken, but I luckily had enough fragments to get a good picture of what a complete tooth looked like.

 

 

With these fossils as my reference I quickly squashed and shaped a chunk of virtual clay into a passable shark tooth:

 

 

And thanks to the wonders of today's technology, I can actually share that model directly in an interactive manner:

 

 

I didn't do so much work on the bottom since I intended to 3D print it. And after warming up the printer and waiting for 3 hours...

 

 

I was able to do all this in an evening. I'm hoping to do more possibly throughout the Summer as my time and inspiration allow. There are a couple of other sharks I had in mind, but I'm open to crowd-sourcing suggestions/requests.

[Al Dente]

4 hours ago, ThePhysicist said:

With these fossils as my reference I quickly squashed and shaped a chunk of virtual clay into a passable shark tooth:

That’s really cool. How long did it take to do the virtual shark tooth?

[Fossildude19]

Wow! Great results!

Very cool - thanks for sharing this with us.

[Misha]

That is awesome! Great model, and a good idea to visualize these tiny specimens

I've been wanting to get into 3D sculpture for a long time, specifically to make models of Devonian fishes but have been putting it off and haven't really made any progress despite having all the necessary software and a tablet to use specifically for that. This might finally push me to learn it.

[ThePhysicist]

19 hours ago, Al Dente said:

That’s really cool. How long did it take to do the virtual shark tooth?

Maybe an hour and a half. 

[Mahnmut]

Very cool sculpt and print!

I thought about sculpting conodont teeth some time ago but never found the time...

Cheers,

J

[Misha]

I forgot to ask, what program are you using here?

I've used blender and zbrush but this doesn't look familiar

[ThePhysicist]

3 hours ago, Mahnmut said:

Very cool sculpt and print!

I thought about sculpting conodont teeth some time ago but never found the time...

Cheers,

J

I've thought of that too, conodonts may be next... 

 

2 hours ago, Misha said:

I forgot to ask, what program are you using here?

I've used blender and zbrush but this doesn't look familiar

This is an app for ipad - nomad sculpt. It seems to be working well even as I'm learning how to use it.

[ThePhysicist]

Next up: another Phoebodont, but from the Genundewa Limestone of NY.

 

 

None of the teeth I found had cusps, so I had to take some creative liberties, though inspired from other Phoebodonts.

 

^ Ginter, Michał and Alexander O. Ivanov. “Devonian phoebodont shark teeth.” Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 37 (1992): 55-75.

 

 

This one took a bit longer with a total time of a few hours spread over many days. The cusps could stand to be shaped a bit more cleanly, but I'm done with it for now.

[ThePhysicist]

Cladoselache is an oft spoken of early "shark," but I didn't know what their teeth looked like. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot online that I could find that would serve as good reference for sculpting, and I sadly don't have one. I found a couple of images/illustrations of Cladoselache teeth, and used other Cladodont teeth for the parts I couldn't see. 

 

^ via Wikipedia 

 

^ found by Ashley Hall in the Cleveland shale

 

[Jared C]

This is freaking awesome

[ThePhysicist]

16 hours ago, Jared C said:

This is freaking awesome

Thanks! It's kinda a niche area, glad people other than me are enjoying it too 

 

I think prints for the previous two came out nicely:

 

[ThePhysicist]

"Cladodont" teeth are one of the earliest tooth styles evolution came up with for sharks; they feature a large primary (median) cusp and reduced lateral and intermediate cusps, arranged like the tines on a trident. Cladoselache is one such Cladodont, but there are other forms, and I decided to do another since they look so darn cool. The tooth I used as my model is Early Permian in age, but oh well.

 

 

I'm hoping to add a Cladodont to the collection at some point, but until then I can enjoy my artistic homage: