How are shells made?

Where do shells come from? CrowdScience listener Tamsyn got in touch, a little embarrassed, confessing that she had managed to reach her twenties without realising that shells are made by living creatures.

Suddenly, her curiosity ran wild and she asked CrowdScience to investigate how these sea creatures have the architectural prowess to make shells in delicate ornamental shapes with beautiful colours and patterns.

The job of sea-creature-investigator-in-chief falls to presenter Marnie Chesterton. She heads to the Natural History Museum in London, UK, where they have more shells than they can keep count of. Researcher Dr Suzanne Williams pulls out drawer after drawer of amazingly varied molluscs for Marnie to marvel at.

Then, it’s off to the beach to go shell hunting with Dr Leanne Melbourne, Senior Curator of Climate Change and the Dynamic Coast for Norfolk Museums in the UK. They look at the structure of shells, and Leanne explains how a soft mollusc is able to make a hard shell so sturdy they can survive for millions of years.

Marnie then gets into some mollusc maths. With shells strewn across a table, Professors Alain Goriely and Derek Moulton at the University of Oxford, UK show Marnie how they have mapped their shapes. Can Marnie uncover the formula that underpins the formation of shells, from the most basic to the inexplicably ornate?

Presenter: Marnie Chesterton

Producer: Tom Bonnett

Editor: Ben Motley

(Photo: Close up of young womans hands holding seashells, Eilat, Israel - stock photo Credit: PhotoStock-Israel via Getty Images)