Re:Sounds like (Score 1)

It is, actually. Turing discretized PDEs to run his simulations, and that corresponds pretty closely to CAs, just with a continuous color level effectively. There is a bunch of stuff in Wolfram's book about this. Here is the section of A New Kind of Science (online) about pigmentation patterns from straight CAs, rather than reaction-diffusion PDEs -

CA pigmentation models

First page shows sample animal patterns, next 3 show CA emulations of them.

There is also this history note about Turing's work on this -

Full credit given to Turing for the idea

The nearby notes are also relevant...