Open AccessCrystallographic texture of Late Triassic gastropod nacre: evidence of long-term stability of the mechanism controlling its formation
Author(s) -
Jiří Frýda,
Klaus Bändel,
Barbora Frýdová
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
bulletin of geosciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.855
H-Index - 34
eISSN - 1802-8225
pISSN - 1214-1119
DOI - 10.3140/bull.geosci.1169
Subject(s) - geology , texture (cosmology) , mechanism (biology) , term (time) , paleontology , artificial intelligence , computer science , philosophy , physics , epistemology , quantum mechanics , image (mathematics)
An analysis of the crystallographic texture of nacre (mother-of-pearl) in the Late Triassic gastropod Wortheniella coralliophila is presented. The primary aim of this study was to test the time stability of the crystallographic texture pattern of gastropod nacre over an extremely long time span. Our results show that the crystallographic axes of individual aragonite platelets in the Late Triassic Wortheniella coralliophila have an identical arrangement to those in living vetigastropods. The same microstructure as well as the crystallographic texture of nacre in Recent and Late Triassic gastropods implies the same biological mechanisms for its formation. Our study suggests that the proteins controlling the shape and orientation of individual nacreous platelets in living gastropods have not changed since the Late Triassic. The molecular mechanisms driving the origin and the development of gastropod nacre are thus extremely old and have remained unchanged for at least 220 million years