Scientists at the American Museum of Natural History have discovered a 300-million-year-old fossilized brain in the fossils of a fish found in Kansas.Paleontologists sent the fossil of an iniopterygian, an extinct species related to modern ratfishes or ghost sharks, to the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility for scanning of its interior. Using a technique known as x-ray holotomography, what the scans revealed was a fossilized brain intact within the braincase of the fish as well as parts of the cerebellum, spinal cord and optic lobes, making it the oldest vertebrate brain ever discovered.
Unlike bones, soft tissue is rarely found in fossil records but examples do exist. Further analysis revealed that the brain contains a high level of calcium phosphate whereas the surrounding matrix contains calcium carbonate. Researchers theorize that bacteria covered the brain before it could decay and induced its chemical phosphatization, preserving its structure.
These results were published in the March 2nd edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
Source: ScienceDaily
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