The tiny bones, each about the thickness of pencil lead, were first spotted three years ago by a local caretaker in the outwash from a steep hillside near a well-known fossil site outside Kunming, China.

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Belonging to a class of worlds known as diamond planets, 55 Cancri e is thought to be rich in the element carbon, which can exist in a variety of structural forms such as graphite (the material used as pencil lead), graphene, or diamond.

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Each day he dotted the virtues he failed to fulfill with a black lead pencil.

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An analogy: think of a pencil, where the lead in the middle is the cellulose fiber, surrounded by unwanted lignin and hemicellulose.

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Later versions would sandwich the lead between two pencil halves and glue them together.

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The rain has started and the sky is turning the color of the lead in a number 2 pencil.

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The poem "O, I won't lead a homely life" was written in pencil below the score, though to an old folk tune.

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"We want to get the lead inside, so instead of chopping the pencil up perpendicularly and exposing just the ends, we strip the wood casing off the outside and expose the length of the lead, " says Litzen.

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