Thursday, 9 February 2017

Wizard-hat amoeba gets named after Gandalf

Arcella gandalfi's shell looks like it's straight out of a Tolkien tale

As far as most laypeople know, all amoebas are soft-bodied creatures – sort of like microscopic versions of The Blob. In fact, though, amoebas of the Thecamoeba genus have a hard outer carapace. In the case of a recently-described new species of Thecamoeba, that shell resembles the wizard's hat worn by Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings. It's only fitting, therefore, that the microorganism has been named Arcella gandalfi.

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Category: Biology

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from New Atlas http://ift.tt/2kTcDPM

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