Yes the meshes are stored in zone files. But there are also what are called global models wich any zone can load.
I dont know how to find the new models races. Maybe somebody knows. But you may have to try to figure out how to force load.
It may be possible that the models are incomplete. Patching do alot of things. Thats why emu never worked from a CD before. There was no way to know if the CDs were even playable on their own. There were many CD versions. They were all patched befor gameplay. Titanium I guess was something the Devs thought was consistant and complete enough to try to make work without patching.
There is a model viewer here..
http://66.159.225.58/eqemu/eq.html
Maybe you can tell if the model you want is in the zone.
You want to be looking at the _chr files. Its hard to look at them cause I guess the vertices need to be weighted and the viewer dont do that. So the bodies seem to show colapsed or crunched up. Unless Im not using the viewer correctly.