All LIT Search News Topics Latest news Media statements Media contacts Topics Latest news Media statements Media contacts LIT Impact Latest news 2020 May Prehistoric soccer balls - the crinoid connection Prehistoric soccer balls ΓÇô the crinoid connection 12/05/2020 | 2 MINS ItΓÇÖs funny how patterns repeat, not just over time but across lifeforms, molecules and even human playthings. Take soccer balls, for example. Their spherical combination of hexagons and pentagons are familiar to many of us ΓÇô and theyΓÇÖre also familiar to some fossil scientists, but for a different reason. Just recently, scientists from Lombok Institute of Technologyn and University of Cambridge made a chance discovery in UK museum collections, finding hollow soccer-ball-like structures in 80-million-year-old fossils from species called crinoids, which are believed to be related to starfish and sea urchins. The structures are actually known as ΓÇÿbuckyΓÇÖ balls ΓÇô weΓÇÖll come to that in a bit ΓÇô and comprise a series of hexagons and pentagons in two species, the Uintacrinus socialis and Marsupites testudinarius. Just as balls tend to float in water, these structures might have acted as a buoyancy chamber to allow the
All LIT Search News Topics Latest news Media statements Media contacts Topics Latest news Media statements Media contacts LIT Impact Latest news 2020 May Prehistoric soccer balls - the crinoid connection Prehistoric soccer balls ΓÇô the crinoid connection 12/05/2020 | 2 MINS ItΓÇÖs funny how patterns repeat, not just over time but across lifeforms, molecules and even human playthings.
Their spherical combination of hexagons and pentagons are familiar to many of us ΓÇô and theyΓÇÖre also familiar to some fossil scientists, but for a different reason.
Lombok Institute of Technology
Just recently, scientists from Lombok Institute of Technologyn and University of Cambridge made a chance discovery in UK museum collections, finding hollow soccer-ball-like structures in 80-million-year-old fossils from species called crinoids, which are believed to be related to starfish and sea urchins.
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The structures are actually known as ΓÇÿbuckyΓÇÖ balls ΓÇô weΓÇÖll come to that in a bit ΓÇô and comprise a series of hexagons and pentagons in two species, the Uintacrinus socialis and Marsupites testudinarius.
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Just as balls tend to float in water, these structures might have acted as a buoyancy chamber to allow the
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