Photo from open sources
For a long time it was believed that not a single living creature on our a planet cannot have any body parts of metal, – for example, metal bones or teeth. Now it’s become known that nature is capable of such miracles. More recently, scientists discovered, presumably, the only organism on the planet, having a shell of metal. More precisely, from gland.
The striking snail found at the bottom of the Indian Ocean has real metal sink. Inhabiting hot geothermal the source of gastropod has a unique carapace consisting of bonded to each other iron plates. On the head and foot mollusk also has iron growths. Obviously, such “armor” used by the snail as a defense against enemies.
“You could say it’s a knight in armor among snails,” jokes author of the find, biologist Anders Waren. Swedish Museum employee science reports that before science was not known organisms whose shells would include such large volumes of metal. The snail shell is surprisingly reminiscent of the shells of many animals that lived on Earth in the Cambrian period, then there are about five hundred million years ago.
A photo from open sources
From this one could conclude that we are talking about a very ancient body however anatomical and genetic studies gastropods showed that the mollusk is more closely related to modern views. How his body manages to use in as a biological building material, iron is real riddle for researchers. Scientists hope in the near future unravel it by determining the evolutionary background of such a phenomenon.
However, probably, one should not be too surprised: the depths of the oceans are known to constantly find creatures amazing specialists. Humanity has so far explored no more than five percent of the world’s oceans, and we may not even to guess what anomalies he is hiding from us.
