Fish Scales
Fish scales are dermally derived, specifically in the mesoderm. This fact distinguishes them from reptile scales paleontologically. Genetically, the same genes involved in tooth and hair development in mammals are also involved in scale development.
Read more about this topic: Scale (anatomy)
Famous quotes containing the words fish and/or scales:
“If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“As deaths have accumulated I have begun to think of life and death as a set of balance scales. When one is young, the scale is heavily tipped toward the living. With the first death, the first consciousness of death, the counter scale begins to fall. Death by death, the scales shift weight until what was unthinkable becomes merely a matter of gravity and the fall into death becomes an easy step.”
—Alison Hawthorne Deming (b. 1946)