An amateur fossil hunter and fossil preparator was on a road trip in New Zealand looking at some tourist attractions when he stumbled across something that he thought was petrified wood at first.

He noticed it had some fossilized bone sticking out and after looking at it a bit closer, he could see it was the skull of a large billfish roughly 48 million years old. The date is an estimate from the geological area it was found in.

According to the fossil hunter, there is a good possibility that this could be a new species of bill fish.

The old fossil skull will be donated to a local museum to be studied further.

The 3D model was created using a Revopoint POP 2 3D scanner and consists of 3 million data points. Creating a 3D model of the skull allows it to be shared with experts across the world without sending the actual fossil to them. A render of the 3D model was done using Blender which took six hours to process.

I am an amateur fossil hunter and fossil preparator and I was on a road trip in New Zealand looking at some tourist attractions when I stumbled across something that I thought was petrified wood at first. I noticed it had some fossilized bone sticking out and after looking at it a bit closer I could see it was the skull of a large billfish (marlin, swordfish, sailfish) and is roughly 48 million years old. The date is an estimate from the geological area it was found in. There is a good possibility that this could be a new species of bill fish.

It will be donated to a local museum to be studied further.

The 3D model was created using a Revopoint POP 2 3D scanner and consists of 3 million data points. It can be downloaded for free and 3D printed at this link: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/fossil-billfish-skull-new-zealand-b43e9d1c1e8b45229d5f7a4a5e8d3a7d

Creating a 3D model of the skull allows it to be shared with experts across the world without sending the actual fossil to them.

A render of the 3D model was done using Blender which took 6 hours to process.


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