(ORDO NEWS) — Paleontologist Matt Friedman of the University of Michigan and his colleagues accidentally made an important discovery: the remains of a 319 million-year-old brain were found in a fossil long forgotten in the storerooms of the university museum.
To date, this is the oldest brain of any vertebrate in the history of observations.
Friedman’s attention was drawn to the fossil, which was found more than a century ago, and since 1925 has been kept in the museum of the University of Michigan.
It is a fragment of a 319 million year old fossilized fish skull that was recovered from a coal mine in England.
Previous studies have determined that the fossil belongs to an extinct fish, one of the progenitors of ray-finned fish.
It has not been studied for many years. However, Friedman decided to analyze the fossil using computed tomography, a technology that was simply not available to his predecessors.
The scan brought a stunning result – CT revealed the remains of a fossilized brain, and also made it possible to clarify the identification of the fish. It turned out that it belongs to the species Coccocephalus wildi.
It was a very early ray-finned fish. Probably, the creature lived in the estuary and fed on small crustaceans, aquatic insects and cephalopods.
These fish had a backbone, so the found brain automatically became the oldest brain of all known vertebrates.
It is also surprising that parts of the brain managed to reach our days. Science almost does not know such examples, because the tissues of any brain are soft.
They are practically not amenable to the process of petrification.
However, in this case, the soft tissues of the brain and cranial nerves were replaced in the process of petrification by a dense mineral that retained its three-dimensional structure in great detail.
“An important finding from the study is that the soft parts of the brain can still be preserved, so we should look at known fossils,” says Friedman. “This fossil, for example, has been known for over 100 years.”
By the way, the leading author of the work was a doctoral student Rodrigo Figueroa, who completed it under the guidance of Friedman.
He noted that the seemingly unimpressive and small fossil not only shows us the oldest example of a fossilized vertebrate brain, but also makes us look at the evolution of the brain in a new way.
Many previously recognized ideas now need to be reworked, says Figueroa.
“With the wide availability of modern imaging techniques, I wouldn’t be surprised if we find that fossil brains and other soft parts are actually much more common than we previously thought,” says Figueroa.
“From now on, our research team and others will be studying the heads of fossil fish with a new perspective on them.
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