as small as a world and as large as alone

10:16pm July 5, 2013

odditiesoflife:

Skin That Cracks Like Cement

The scales on the face and jaws of crocodiles do not appear during early development as previously thought. The spacing and pattern of their scales is actually the result of the physical cracking of their skin, like the cracks that appear on cement or asphalt. 

For other animals, the patterns that appear on structures like scales, hair, and feathers are formed during their earliest stage of development. This is not so for the facial scales of a crocodile. Skin sections show that cracks correspond to epidermal bulges that reach the stiff underlying tissues. In crocodiles, it is not the cracking layer that shrinks but the embryonic skull that grows, which generates stress causing their skin to crack. This process is analogous to true physical cracking, as in drying or cooling pavement.

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