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5 - Connecting the Layered Growth and Crystallization model to chemical and physiological approaches

Ongoing conceptual changes in biocalcification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2011

Jean-Pierre Cuif
Affiliation:
Université de Paris-Sud II, Orsay
Yannicke Dauphin
Affiliation:
Université de Paris VI (Pierre et Marie Curie)
James E. Sorauf
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Binghamton
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Summary

Research on the formation and properties of mineralized structures produced by living organisms is characterized by the diverse origins, methods, and aims of scientific investigators. This has resulted primarily from the rapid development of analytical methods in the second half of the twentieth century. As has been emphasized above in preceding chapters, the contrast between shell structures was never thought greater than at the beginning of this period. At that time, structures were still described with the optical microscope in the same way as Bowerbank had, yet, at the same time, were analyzed with the latest developments in theoretical and applied physics. These provided new data on isotopic fractionation in the calcium carbonate of the same shells.

Here we should emphasize that underestimating optical studies is a serious error. The logic of interpretations concerning the formation and method of growth of calcareous biominerals was influenced by their crystalline appearance in microstructural units, as observed with the polarizing microscope. It is important to acknowledge the great accuracy and precision of descriptions carried out at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and acknowledge our debt to these early researchers for the development of many of the major concepts in the field of biomineralization. Bourne (1899), in a seminal paper dealing with the formation of skeleton in the Anthozoa, carefully described the crucial zone of contact between the calicoblastic ectoderm and the corallite skeleton.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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