Originally published at: The lioconcha heiroglyphica is a species of clam that looks like it's covered in symbols | Boing Boing
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When you crossreference it with the calligraphy beetle and the hieroglyph moth, you can begin to crack the code.
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That looks like the kind of patterns cellular automata create. Nifty!
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it also looks like failed attempts at a Sierpiński triangle!
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Don’t open it, you’ll summon Zuul.
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There is no edgore. There is only Zuul…
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Stephen Wolfram discussed the likely source of this patterning in his ‘New Kind of Science’ tome…
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The Conus litteratus or Lettered Cone shell is even more striking:
The one I have looks like a scroll of paper covered with Hebrew letters. I’ve always thought it was trying to say “don’t touch me” because they’re quite venomous.
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That’s always been my contention.
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This could easily be mistaken for a piece of discarded clay used for practicing cuneiform.
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Looks like a design you’d see on some Mesoamerican pottery.
In fact that is a pattern easily created by cellular automata too. I mean, plainly not with infinite self-similarity. But with each new row, have cells be 1 if one of the neighbors to the up-left and up-right are, and 0 if both or neither are…and then a single 1 will grow into something ever more similar to a Sierpiński triangle.
I imagine something similar is happening as these shells grow, but less exact. It’s a pretty result.
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So probably not junior-clam graffiti-artists, which was my first theory.
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I think they’re trying to say hello. 
Yes, I’m being silly. I just love seeing how all kinds of creatures develop complex patterns. IIRC someone recorded a video of a beetle that happens to have a near mirror finish to their shells that makes them look more like a metal sculpture than a living being. Nature loves to do weird stuff.
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Wolfram 30 in action
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