By Sid Perkins
An as-yet-unnamed species of snail living around hydrothermal vents deep beneath the Indian Ocean bears an unusual suit of armor forged from the dissolved minerals spewing into its seafloor habitat.
![](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2003/11/3473.jpg?resize=145%2C150&ssl=1)
The sides of the snail’s foot are covered with scales that range up to 8 millimeters in length and overlap like roof tiles, says Anders Warén, a marine biologist at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm. The core of those structures is made of a protein called conchiolin, a common component of many mollusk shells. What makes these flaps unique is their 100-micrometer-thick coating of iron sulfide, a biological armor that’s made of mineral particles just 1 m in diameter.