Where Does Sand Come From? Parrotfish Poop Makes White Beaches and Now Scientists Know How

Noted: The team, made up of scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the University of Wisconsin-Madison used a Berkeley X-ray machine known as the Advanced Light Source (ALS) to look at parrotfish teeth. They also used a technique known as polarization-dependent imaging contrast (PIC) mapping to further examine the teeth. PIC was developed by study researcher Pupa Gilbert, a biophysicist and professor in the Physics Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and allowed the researchers to see the parrotfish in a way previously not possible.