Alligator - hatchling skull

3D Model

The head skeleton of a day 0 (newly hatched) Alligator mississippiensis (OUVC 10606), with annotations of some of the more obscure anatomical features. It was provided to us for study by the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge (Louisiana Dept. of Wildlife & Fisheries). We scanned the head region on the OUµCT scanner in 2009 at a resolution of 45µm (0.045 mm). The skull bones were segmented individually in Avizo by David Dufeau and Jason Bourke in 2011. Ryan Ridgely assembled these materials in Maya for upload here. For more 3D content on this and other alligators, check out the Visible Interactive Alligator site: http://bit.ly/2ttvbKa . There you’ll find 3D PDFs for download that provide comparable content to what’s here, but allowing the user more control. This model can be downloaded here as an OBJ. The original scan data can be downloaded on Dryad (http://bit.ly/1QAEGJP), in association with a PLOS ONE article by Dufeau & Witmer (http://bit.ly/1R3DFe4).