This bizarre ‘wandering meatloaf’ is alive and has ridiculous teeth

If you've never heard of the mollusk Cryptochiton stelleri, it's totally understandable. I actually hadn't heard of it before either, but a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has made the strange creature one of my new favorites. The marine animal is a type of chiton, which are mollusks that are oval-shaped and covered with armor-like shell plates. They cruise around on the seafloor, slowly making their way from one food source to the next.

Cryptochiton stelleri is special for a few reasons. For one, it looks like a giant blob of meat, earning it the nickname "wandering meatloaf." But the even more interesting thing is that its teeth are ridiculously hard. Now, scientists studying the teeth recently discovered that the animal's teeth contain a type of mineral that, previous to this new finding, had only been identified in rocks. The fact that this type of chiton has the mineral in its teeth was entirely unexpected, but also very exciting.