{"id":123489,"date":"2021-06-06T19:22:35","date_gmt":"2021-06-07T02:22:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/06\/the-teeth-of-wandering-meatloaf-contain-a-rare-mineral-found-only-in-rocks"},"modified":"2021-06-06T19:22:35","modified_gmt":"2021-06-07T02:22:35","slug":"the-teeth-of-wandering-meatloaf-contain-a-rare-mineral-found-only-in-rocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/06\/the-teeth-of-wandering-meatloaf-contain-a-rare-mineral-found-only-in-rocks","title":{"rendered":"The teeth of \u2018wandering meatloaf\u2019 contain a rare mineral found only in rocks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-teeth-of-wandering-meatloaf-contain-a-rare-mineral-found-only-in-rocks2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The hard, magnetic teeth of a leathery red-brown mollusk nicknamed \u201cthe wandering meatloaf\u201d possess <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/teeth-wandering-meatloaf-mollusk-rare-mineral-magnetite-rocks\/The%20hard%20magnetic%20teeth%20of%20a%20leathery%20red-brown%20mollusk%20nicknamed%20\">a rare mineral previously seen only in rocks<\/a>. The mineral may help the mollusk \u2014 the giant Pacific chiton (<em>Cryptochiton stelleri<\/em>) \u2014 meld its soft flesh to the hard teeth it uses for grazing on rocky coastlines, researchers report online May 31 in <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><em>C. stelleri<\/em> is the world\u2019s largest chiton, reaching up to roughly 35 centimeters long. It is equipped with several dozen rows of teeth on a slender, flexible, tonguelike appendage called a radula that it uses to scrape algae off rocks. Those teeth are covered in magnetite, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S136970211070016X\">the hardest, stiffest known biomineral<\/a> to date: It\u2019s as much as three times as hard as human enamel and mollusk shells.<\/p>\n<p>Materials scientist Derk Joester and colleagues analyzed these teeth using high-energy X-rays from the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Ill. They discovered that the interface between the teeth and flesh contained nanoparticles of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.schweizerbart.de\/papers\/ejm\/detail\/15\/54934\/Santabarbaraite_a_new_amorphous_phosphate_mineral?af=crossref\">santabarbaraite<\/a>, an iron-loaded mineral never seen before in a living organism\u2019s body.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The hard, magnetic teeth of a leathery red-brown mollusk nicknamed \u201cthe wandering meatloaf\u201d possess a rare mineral previously seen only in rocks. The mineral may help the mollusk \u2014 the giant Pacific chiton (Cryptochiton stelleri) \u2014 meld its soft flesh to the hard teeth it uses for grazing on rocky coastlines, researchers report online May [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-nanotechnology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123489\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}