This totally fits on the blog because of the phytoplankton are ancient (just go with it ;D), and it’s way too weird to think about all of those blackboards in elementary school, smeared with the shells constructed by eons-gone eukaryotic life…crazy stuff. rhamphotheca: A Single Coccolithophore Cell Billions of ancient, long-dead coccolithophores — marine phytoplankton that construct shells around themselves out of calcium carbonate scales — form the chalk that teachers use to write on blackboards. Read this wonderful blog post from NPR’s Robert Krulwich about these amazing, microscopic organisms and their history.http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/07/12/156629934/thinking-too-much-about-chalk (Photo Credit: Alison R. Taylor, PLoS Biology, Wikimedia Commons) (via: Smithsonian Ocean Portal)

This totally fits on the blog because of the phytoplankton are ancient (just go with it ;D), and it’s way too weird to think about all of those blackboards in elementary school, smeared with the shells constructed by eons-gone eukaryotic life…crazy stuff.

rhamphotheca:

A Single Coccolithophore Cell

Billions of ancient, long-dead coccolithophores — marine phytoplankton that construct shells around themselves out of calcium carbonate scales — form the chalk that teachers use to write on blackboards.

Read this wonderful blog post from NPR’s Robert Krulwich about these amazing, microscopic organisms and their history.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/07/12/156629934/thinking-too-much-about-chalk

(Photo Credit: Alison R. Taylor, PLoS Biology, Wikimedia Commons)

(via: Smithsonian Ocean Portal)

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