Biologists have often wondered what would happen if they could rewind the tape of life’s history and let evolution play out all over again. Would lineages of organisms evolve in radically different ...

You’d probably walk past a chiton without even seeing it. These creatures often look like nothing more than another speck of seaweed on the crusty intertidal rocks. But it sees you. At least, if it’s ...

This essay was launched by reading an almost unintelligible (to me) scientific paper about chiton eyes. Nevertheless, that paper led to others, and here I have summarized some of the related natural ...

You’d expect the hardest teeth in nature to belong to sharks, crocodiles, or some ancient dino. But surprisingly the title goes to a slow-moving, algae-scraping mollusc called the chiton. This ...