snarl

mad-as-a-marine-biologist:

descartesautomatondaughter:

This monsterpiece is a scaly foot sea snail, encrusted with black and gold scales made of iron sulfide and pyrite (fool’s gold). Other wonders from this photo set from a deep-sea vent in the south-west Indian Ocean include a stalked barnacle. Stalked!

(Source: Guardian)

Monsterpiece? Or nature’s Masterpiece? Crysomalion squamiferum is the only species known to use iron sulfide’s in this way, not only on it’s foot, but it’s shell as well. It is so hardcore that the US Military is helping fund research on its armour in the hopes of developing new insight into the designs of military armour. 

Materials scientist Christine Ortiz of MIT and her colleagues examined the small-scale properties of the shell and created a computer simulation to examine how the armour works.