Abstract: Selecting the most important regions of a surface is useful for shape matching and a variety of applications in computer graphics and geometric modeling. While previous research has analyzed geometric properties of meshes in isolation, we select regions that distinguish a shape from objects of a different type. Our approach to analyzing distinctive regions is based on performing a shape-based search using each region as a query into a database. Distinctive regions of a surface have shape consistent with objects of the same type and different from objects of other types. We demonstrate the utility of detecting distinctive surface regions for shape matching and other graphics applications including mesh visualization, icon generation, and mesh simplification.