Evidence of Ancient Brains
Nov. 9, 2015
A fossil creature buried in an "invertebrate version of Pompeii" more than half a billion years ago reveals an exquisitely fossilized brain. "This is the oldest preserved brain of any kind," said Nicholas Strausfeld, a Regents' Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Arizona's Department of Neuroscience, who identified the brain as typifying that of a modern mandibulate arthropod, thus virtually unchanged for at least 520 million years. Neuropaleontology is now an important part of research on brain evolution.