Unraveling How an Extinct Mollusk Got Its Strange Shell
The New York Times
Scientists devised a mathematic model that helps explains how Nipponites, some of the wonkiest ammonites, built their shells.
If you’ve seen one ammonite, you may think you’ve seen them all. Most of the 10,000 species of the extinct cephalopods sported tightly coiled shells with polite mouthfuls of tentacles.
Enter Nipponites mirabilis, a species of ammonite straight out of an M.C. Escher painting. In place of the classic, coiled-snake shell design, it substituted something far more ludicrous: a convoluted shell twisting into itself with no obvious beginning or end.
“It looks like a chunk of rope that someone threw out a window,” said Kathleen Ritterbush, a paleoecologist at the University of Utah.
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