As we continue to work on WSC's collection of Late Pleistocene fossils from Murrieta, it has become clear that, while the collection my be taxonomically diverse, it contains a lot of horse bones!The specimen shown above is a lower right first molar of the horse Equus occidentalis in lateral (labial) view. On the left is an unpainted 3D print of the same specimen. Below is the same specimen in occlusal view:
Horses are highly hypsodont, meaning they have very tall, high-crowned teeth. As you can see in the lateral view at the top, we have both the roots and the occlusal surface preserved, showing that we have the whole tooth (it's not broken), yet the tooth is quite short. That's because almost this entire tooth has been worn away, indicating that it came from a very elderly horse.We've obviously scanned this tooth, since we've 3D-printed it. We've also made the scan available on Sketchfab:https://skfb.ly/6xyuR