These normally don’t have three sections it seems.
Well! You got me to go to my freezer and look at the ginkgo nuts I have stored there. You are correct, they normally have two sections. This is a thing that happens in plants sometimes: a developing flower or fruit will, by accident, come out larger or smaller than normal. When that happens, instead of making the petals larger or smaller, the developmental algorithm will either add or remove petals to fit the space. You can see examples in the project Peculiar Petal Counts.
So this is likely what happened to your ginkgo seed: an accident of development caused it to grow larger than normal, and the extra space was filled in with another section.
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Wow, thanks, that’s really interesting!
@jasonhernandez74 I have to smile at the idea that you have ginkgo nuts in your freezer! 
Are they for research purposes or are they edible?
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Out of 24 ginkgo fruits I collected from a single tree last year, 2 had seeds that looked exactly like this. I believe this “deformity” is caused by the fertilization and successful development of 2 ovules within a single seed. Usually 3/4 ovules resulting from the meiosis of the female gametophyte abort, leaving only one to be fertilized. Occasionally fewer than 3 are aborted, allowing mutliple embryos to develop within a single seed
As a (very basal) gymnosperm, Ginkgo biloba does not produce petaled flowers, but I’m sure petals are responsible for the kind of oddity shared here in some angiosperms
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They are edible.
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Can they be both?
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/taxonomy-for-breakfast/36683
Do you know any articles that support this? I was collecting seeds and noticed around 8% of seeds form 3 sections instead of 2 (and occasionally i have found a disfigurement where it doesn’t fully form 2 shell sections). Anyway I found this very interesting and wanted to look deeper into this. Any references or article suggestions?
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Sorry I have no references except prior knowledge from biology videos and courses. It is interesting that the proportion of tripartite seeds you found is similar to mine (2/24 = 1/12 = 8.25%).
I found the reference to "the weak compound middle lamella " in this article on gingko seed mechanical design interesting. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36442101/
It’s conceivable such a structure can respond to stresses by atypical growth development.
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