Synchrotron Imaging of Biominerals highlights new results and challenges

Biominerals, the mineralized tissues of animals, plants, and microorganisms, have inspired humanity with their properties and forms since prehistory. Bones and shells have been used for tools, for currency, for symbolic objects and for art in every culture. Both the fascination and the importance that biominerals present for science are made clear in Darwin's nineteenth-century writings, and in D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's 1917 On Growth and Form, with its memorable cover illustration of the multi-chambered calcium carbonate nautilus shell. Biomineralization is now a field of study in its own right