Photo by Rory Cooper, Kyle Martin and Amin Garbout of a shark embryo with developing teeth and "denticules," the tooth-like things on their skin. Besides looking awesome this image was
part of a study that showed the
denticles distribute themselves in a ‘Turing-like pattern’, a process first proposed by British mathematician Alan Turing in 1952. The pattern is known to drive the development of feathers in birds, but this discovery hints at a common evolutionary origin much farther down the tree of life, up to 450 million years ago.
1 comment:
"The pattern is known to drive the development of feathers in birds, but this discovery hints at a common evolutionary origin much farther down the tree of life, up to 450 million years ago."
Well, sure - if we go far enough back, presumably everything shares a common evolutionary origin.
Or perhaps it could just be one of countless cases of convergent evolution. Not sure which is the more remote possibility.
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