Topic summary
Sclerites
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Sclerite.
Sclerites in combination
Sclerites may occur practically isolated in an organism, such as the sting of a cone shell. Also, they can be more or less scattered, such as tufts of defensive sharp, mineralised bristles as in many marine polychaetes. Or, they can occur as structured, but unconnected or loosely connected arrays, such as the mineral "teeth" in the radula of many Mollusca, the valves of chitons, the beak of a cephalopod, or the articulated exoskeletons of Arthropoda.