As seen in the most recent edition of Pulse, two Sawfish Rostrums have been discovered in the Armidale Folk Museum’s collection1. One of these has now been scanned by the Learning Media Team. This impressive nose is over a metre long and was scanned in the Natural History Museum recently. Our intention is to convert these scans into a 3D Printed version; a much safer to handle and transport.
Belonging to a Sawfish, a type of Ray closely related to sharks. These impressive saw-like rostrums that inspire their name are incredibly complex tools. Some are used as Electrolocation, some are used as a hunting tool some are noted doing both in some species2. Counting the teeth on the Rostrum can help a biologist determine the sex of the species as on average females have fewer teeth and often have slightly smaller rostrums3.
Figure 1 3D printed Sawfish Rostrum
Scanning a longer object had some complications, given the narrow teeth, but this was completed in less than an hour. For printing purposes, we then separated the file into 6 parts and then added small insert points to assist in joining them. This model is planned to be used in a talk later this year by Heidi Kolkert in Sydney.
1https://une.shorthandstories.com/tales-of-the-unexpected/index.html
2Barbara E. Wueringer, Lyle Squire, Stephen M. Kajiura, Nathan S. Hart, Shaun P. Collin,
The function of the sawfish’s saw,
Current Biology,
Volume 22, Issue 5,
2012,
Pages R150-R151,
3Peter R. Last, Bernard Séret, William Toby White, Matthias F. W. Stehmann, Marcelo R. de Carvalho, Gavin J. P. Naylor
Rays of the World
CSIRO Publishing
2016
Pages 59-66