Researchers from Northeastern’s Ocean Genome Legacy Center discover a new genus and species of shipworm that eats rocks in the Philippines Researchers from Northeastern’s Ocean Genome Legacy Center have discovered a new genus and species of shipworm burrowing into the bedrock of a river in the Philippines. The pale, blobby creature, they say in a paper published Tuesday, has evolved to devour a home in rocks and excrete sand. Their work is part of the Philippine Mollusk Symbiont project, a collaboration led by universities in the United States and the Philippines to simultaneously document the biodiversity of the islands and search for compounds that could be used in human medicine. by Benjamin Bertsch June 18, 2019 by Adam Fischer