Researchers at the University of Utah and Northeastern University meet a live giant shipworm for the first time. (Marvin Altamia)For hundreds of years, biologists knew of the giant shipworm only from shell fragments and a handful of dead specimens. As Haygood and her colleagues reported Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the search for the giant shipworm has come to an end. “The living animal is just magnificent.”(University of Utah)What's more, the giant shipworm barely has a digestive system. In the case of the giant shipworm, the scientists found grains of sulfur packed into the bacteria.

Source: Washington Post April 17, 2017 19:13 UTC