Scientists have just discovered a new three-dimensional shape, scutoid

Until last week, the world of science was unaware of the scutoid. The scutoid is a basic three-dimensional shape, like a cube or a sphere but not like either of those things.

A new kind of asteroid?
Nope. Nothing you can find with a telescope. More microscopic, actually. Want to take one more guess?

Oh no. Just tell me now. Or else....
Ah! Curiosity. Okay, here you go. A scutoid is actually a new shape, something new to geometry.


And this new shape just emerged?
Well, not quite. You see, in a scientific paper published last week, scientists described what is a scutoid. Imagine a column, with two parallel faces and a few sides that are parallelograms.

Imagine? You mean it's just imagined?
No! It’s found in nature. Actually, often epithelial cells, you know the skin cells, are stacked in this shape to fit tightly into some areas.

Found in nature? And you took so long to say that?
You see, I was about to start explaining.

You mean, mansplaining.
Hey no. It’s tough, you see. Does it help if I say a scutoid is a beheaded prism? A frustum.

No. Am leaving. Bye.
One minute. Let’s try another way. A scutoid is also named after a scutum or a scutellum, meaning a shield. It’s like the body of some kind of beetles. The scientists have said that a scutoid seems to be the most efficient shape for cells to bind together.

That's better. So where do we find these shapes?
Within us. All of us have skin cells arranged in scutoids.

And we didn't know so far?
Actually, they are saying many more shapes may exist. We have not figured them out yet.