Bernie the Ichthyosaur: Bones, Bones

I'm doing a project that is giving me perspective on how much we have accomplished in the past 5 years. I have decided to print out a reference set of all the bones I have prepared so far. In fact, I have decided to print out 3 sets - one for myself, one for OMSI, and one for the University of Oregon's Condon collection. Right now I have scanned about 138 bones, so 3 sets will have 414 bones. In addition, most of these bones are not from the centerline of the animals. So if I print both the original bones and the mirror images, I will have about 700 bones.

I have been printing the bones for about a month out of ivory-colored PLA. It prints well, and I'm enjoying it. So far I have printed 33 sets of 3 bones, about 3 per day. At this rate it will take another 15 weeks or so for the original bones to be printed, so I won't get them all done by Christmas.

Here are the skull bones I have printed so far. This is only about half of the total number of skull or brain-case bones that we have. This really makes me thankful to have so much skull material! This is truly is a treasure.

Here are the other bones I have printed so far. Keep in mind that this is only about 1/4 of what I will eventually end up with. So many Bones!

And here is the workhorse - my printer.

But wait - there's more! I have lot of bones that I have not scanned. Most of them are fragmentary or are part of groups that I don't intend to totally prepare. This is because most of the groups contain bones we know well, or are very aesthetic. There are another 160 or so bones or parts of bones in the cabinet at OMSI These too will go to the University of Oregon, along with the bones sent to Alaska.

But wait - there's still more! These bones have been taken from only about 2/3 of the find - we still have 1/3 to go!

So ultimately I predict we will have (138+160)*3/2 = 450 unique bones !

Ribs and Gastralia