Scutoid:
Scientists Discover an Entirely New Shape—
and It's Been Hiding Inside Your Skin Cells
geometrical solution to three-dimensional packing of epithelia", a team from the Universidad de Sevilla, Campus Universidad Pablo de Olavide, and Lehigh University discovered and named a new shape.
Where can you find this shape? Many very very small parts called epithelial cells, the cells that help form the outer surface of your skin and line the insides of your organs such as your intestines.
Epithelial cells form protective barriers and thus must stay tightly packed together to not allow gaps and to communicate with each other. Traditional three-dimensional shapes such as columns or cubes may not permit the cells to remain tightly beside each other when an epithelial layer is curved, because, as you know, your skin and your organs are not completely flat unless you are a cartoon character......."We then discovered that this shape didn’t even have a name in math."
The study could have implications for a variety of fields, ranging from mathematics to biomedicine. Specifically, it could help scientists better understand how organs are formed during their development and, consequently, how certain diseases develop when this process is disrupted..... a new shape that they ended naming the scutoid, pronounced SCOO-Toid.
Forbes/Newsweek
Scientists Discover an Entirely New Shape—
and It's Been Hiding Inside Your Skin Cells
And though I ...understand all mysteries,
and all knowledge; and ...and have not love, I am nothing.
1 Corinthians 13:2
"The word scutoid hasn't quite reached everyday lexicon as a shape yet because it is a really, really new shape. As described by a publication in Nature Communications entitled "Scutoids are a 
Where can you find this shape? Many very very small parts called epithelial cells, the cells that help form the outer surface of your skin and line the insides of your organs such as your intestines.
Epithelial cells form protective barriers and thus must stay tightly packed together to not allow gaps and to communicate with each other. Traditional three-dimensional shapes such as columns or cubes may not permit the cells to remain tightly beside each other when an epithelial layer is curved, because, as you know, your skin and your organs are not completely flat unless you are a cartoon character......."We then discovered that this shape didn’t even have a name in math."
The study could have implications for a variety of fields, ranging from mathematics to biomedicine. Specifically, it could help scientists better understand how organs are formed during their development and, consequently, how certain diseases develop when this process is disrupted..... a new shape that they ended naming the scutoid, pronounced SCOO-Toid.
Forbes/Newsweek
