Inside the skulls of the real life sandworms from Dune
AUSTIN (KXAN) — Cutting beneath sand on the desert world of Arrakis, giant sandworms strike fear and inspire awe in the blockbuster “Dune” films. Based on the 1965 novel, the sandworm has grown into one of the most iconic creatures of science fiction, but these creatures are not just relegated to stories. Here on Earth, a similar species lurks beneath the surface.
“There’s just not a whole lot known about them, because they are sort of rare,” said Patrick Lewis Ph.D., from Sam Houston University when asked about Worm Lizards.
Ranging from a few millimeters in length to several inches, Worm Lizards are a bizarre creature that lives in Africa, South America, the Caribbean and southern California.
There around 200 different species of Worm Lizards, also known scientifically by Amphisbaenians.
Lewis was studying environmental changes in Botswana when he took an interest in Worm Lizards. They have a lizard-like head, big teeth and a snake like body. Some species even have little vestigial limbs and pelvises. Worm Lizards are hard to find and live underground.
“They look a little terrifying, you know, those big teeth. If they were the size of a dog, you know, we would all be running away from them,” Lewis said. So, of course, he collected a few of the tiny ones and brought them to the United States.
Beneath the skin of the Worm Lizards
One of the challenges to studying these creatures is their size. Lewis, along with the University of Texas researcher Chris Bell, needed to look closer at them, but dissection was a challenge.
“They’re so small, and the bones are really tightly knit together, you know, traditional anatomical approach you dissected bone by bone, you just take it apart. These are only a few millimeters long,” Lewis said.
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They decided the best way to study something so small was by relying on the power of the atom. They brought the specimens to the University of Texas’ CT Lab.
The CT Lab is located in the basement of the Jackson School of Geosciences. The team scans a mixture of things: meteors, rock samples, snakes, lizards, violins, Cheetos.
Jessica Maisano, a Research Science Associate with the CT Lab, said they have two machines. One is large, a giant brown box that could fit a person and pump them full of lethal radiation. The other is smaller, capable of more detailed scans down to a micron in detail.
Along a wall, a collection of photos from scientific journals that have featured research conducted with the help of the CT Lab. Soon, a research paper written by Lewis and Bell will join this wall.
The strange skulls of the Worm Lizards
How do you conduct a CT scan on a very tiny Worm Lizard? Straws. Maisano collects them and uses them to mount various specimens in. Her cabinet is full of straws, tiny ones for lizards and giant ones used to hold boa constrictors.
The Worm Lizards were placed in the machine and scanned. These scans were used to build a 3D model of the Worm Lizard, which can then be 3D printed and used by future researchers.
So what did they discover? “Their skulls are like a Chinese finger puzzle,” Maisano said. Most vertebrate have skulls made of tiny plates that are interlocked. Worm Lizards have much tighter interlocking plates.
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“If they didn’t have that inner fingering, they wouldn’t be able to use their heads as a shovel, which is what they do, because these guys live underground,” Maisano said. Many species that live underground use hands to dig, but the Worm Lizard is all skull digging.
According to Lewis, seeing this pattern inside a Worm Lizards skull could give us a greater understanding on how other vertebrates’ skulls are constructed.
While Maisano said that the research could help us understand not just the species alive today, but those that have since passed.
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