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.
"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."
ReplyDeleteWell, 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.