Friday, July 14, 2006
Amoeboid architecture
Radagast has found an amazing group of photos shortlisted for this year's Kongsberg Underwater Image Competition.
There are stunnig photos in all the catergories but have to check out the images of microspopic specimens which include the photo at the top of this post. That photo might look like it's come to you curtousey of Buckminster Fuller (or perhaps an adenovirus) but it's actually the product of an protozoa. The Radiolarians are an ancient group (they in fact beat Human architects to this particualr structure by about 600 million years) of planktonic protozoa that form minerlised skeletons . Many of Ernst Haeckel's famously elaborate drawings come from his book on the Radiolarians