What is a natural pearl, and how are they formed? Natural pearls form when some kind of irritant, usually a small organism, makes its way into the shell of a mollusk like an oyster or a mussel.

A great irony of pearl history is that the least expensive ... To reduce irritation, the mollusk coats the intruder with the same secretion it uses for shell-building, nacre.

The oyster or mussel slowly secretes layers of aragonite and conchiolin, materials that also make up its shell. This creates a material called nacre, also known as mother-of-pearl, which encases the ...

The answer to today’s Wordle is … And here’s what it means, according to our good friend ChatGPT: A pearl is a hard, round ...

From the 1860s to the 1930s, natural pearls were the talk of town in Paris, as chronicled in a new exhibit running until June ...

And not every pearl comes out the same. The size of the pearl largely depends on the size of the mollusk. For example, akoya pearls can only grow about 9 or 10 millimeters in diameter, but South ...

The Alabama pearlshell mussel, a small, endangered mollusk found in a just a few creeks ... shine on its inside shell that resembles a pearl.