On the origin of ammonite sutures

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Abstract
The origin of ammonite sutures is one of the most interesting open problems in paleontology. Present theories of suture formation deal with function rather than morphogenesis. Here we present a study showing that sutures are scale-invariant. In each of ten different ammonite genera, the ontogenetic sequence of the suture can be characterized by the same fractal dimension. We propose a morphogenetic theory for ammonite sutures that is based on the similarity between sutures and the Saffman-Taylor instability in both fractal characters and physical mechanism.