North American Porcupine Skull

thingiverse

I created this model from a photogrammetric scan of a damaged North American porcupine (/Erethizon dorsatum/) skull that I acquired while visiting Skulls Unlimited's Museum of Osteology in Oklahoma City. The skull is missing the right zygomatic arch and the left dentary. As a paleontologist, I often don't worry too much about the condition of skulls I add to my comparative collection - as long as the important features are well preserved on at least one side, I'm happy. If only more fossil skulls were this complete! The left jaw presented here is a mirrored version of the original right. Anyone feeling industrious could mirror the left side of the skull to correct for the missing right zygomatic. Bilateral symmetry can be pretty awesome sometimes. The left zygomatic might be a little misaligned due to an incident that may or may not have occurred - I won't confirm or deny it, but it's possible that the skull came loose from the scanner turntable and hit the floor, producing a heart-wrenching cracking sound that echoed across the lab. The single STL with the cranium and jaws is primarily for visualization purposes only. There is no connection between the two, making printing it difficult. The other three files should be fairly easy to print with support. Personally, I would cut them up and reorient the pieces to minimize support. As always, I leave it up to you to optimize them for printing.